The Assistant Apprentice
by Gimme-a-Hand-Scaevola
Summary: Grief stricken from Muriel's abandonment, the wayward Pellinore Warthrop spent a single night in the arms of a woman he did not know. Thirteen years later the consequences of his grief arrive scowling on his doorstep, already too aware of the world's negligence. What she needed to find was a father, all she got was Warthrop whose neglect delivers her to exactly the wrong man.
1. The Wrong Man

**Chapter 1**

I was thirteen when I arrived on the doorstep of 425 Harrington Lane, the place I would begrudgingly call my home for the next decade. Although I would spend more time away from it than within it. The house was large and grand but poorly maintained. A different child might have balked at the state of her new of it. But I was cognizant that it was this or a workhouse for me.

The constable of New Jerusalem, who accompanied me on my first approach to the grim house had first done me the indecency of stripping me of the clothes I had been brought to him in. Well, his wife had, so indignity more than indecency, I suppose. I had come in what I had worn as a motherless vagrant of New York City, rough trousers and a greyed shirt. He had put me in a dress that did not fit so much as hang off my shoulders. Trousers, he had said, were unbecoming and indeed illegal for a young lady. But without delicate shoes to give me, he had mercifully allowed me my sturdy boots. These had been hard won and I would not have given them up without considerable struggle. But it seemed there were no laws concerning the daintiness of a lady's footwear, only that she put nothing between her legs. This coincided with what I had already been made aware about the world.

The constable rapped on the door. His hand was uncomfortably on my shoulder and his face was set with a grim distaste. He didn't want to bring me here, and had told me as much. Had said, in fact, that if he had any other option he would have brought me there, to any home but this one. When I had said why I had come, that they had been shipping orphans out west, to work on Midwestern farms, he had told me I would have been better off taking my chances. But it was his duty as a lawman to bring me, a wayward almost orphan, to my next of kin. And beyond the door with peeling paint, marked with a sturdy 425, was my next of kin.

The constable had to knock three times before there was an answer. In this way, I heard him before I saw him.

"Will Henry! WILL HENRY! WILL HENREEEE!"

Each of his subsequent shouts were louder than the last. Anger blossoming each time he had to repeat himself.

I knew his name, I had always known his name, he was a story that my mother had been strangely fond of, considering it had left her bereft and with child. But he had been what she called 'a proper gentleman' and one of the few of those that she had ever come into close proximity to. She only learned his name afterward, when he fled, leaving behind his coat, a business card tucked into the pocket.

The business card had not said what he did, only given the address and, in bold lettering: Dr. Pellinore Xavier Warthrop. I had it with me as proof of my paternity. It didn't matter if he took it as such, it had been enough to keep me out of a workhouse and out of the farmland, so it had done as much as I could ask of it. If he threw me out, I could dodge the constable and survive on my own.

After many minutes the constable's summons was answered, we were here, after all in the middle of the night, not by a man, but a boy, older than me maybe by a year or two and no more. He looked somewhat bedraggled with circles under his eyes and sleep tossed clothes.

"Ah, Will," the constable said, discomfort increasing with the sight of the boy, "I have a matter to discuss with Dr. Warthrop, fetch him at once."

Will's attention was on me rather than the constable, but I didn't say anything. I had been struck by nerves. The name Pellinore Warthrop and the address 425 Harrington Lane had been a phantom of my childhood. I had employed them to spare my short term needs. Now, standing before the house, it settled into my heart that my father lay just beyond the door.

A crease formed between Will's brows, but he turned back into the house without comment. When he returned he brought with him a man who, if Will was bedraggled, he was positively grimy. Not quite the gentleman I had been told about. He was tall and slender and might have been good looking if he were cleaned up a bit. I wondered if he were ill, his face was so pale and hollow. There were stains marring his shirtsleeves, rolled up to the elbow, and what looked quite like blood smeared on his collar, unbuttoned.

I had grown up three blocks south of the Five Points in New York City, a rough neighborhood to be sure. I had spent the first eleven years of my life with only the, spotty at best, oversight of my mother, the last two I had not had even that. My force of necessity I knew how to draw the worst conclusions. And this house was beginning to make my blood sing in my veins the way it did when I crept through dark alleys or slipped inside saloons. This man clearly lived alone with only the boy for company. And he had been called Warthrop, as I had known, and the boy Henry.

The warning beacons, small alone, began to form a constellation. The constable's dread to bring me here and his certainty that even a fate picked farm would be more suitable. The sorry that crept over his face at the sight of the boy Will Henry. Will's own state, poorly cared for, with darting eyes and a look I recognized as one who had seen more than the innocent affairs of childhood.

Where I come from had not been a comfort palace, I had learned early the ways of men and the dark manifestations of their baser needs, although I had been quick and clever and kept my knowledge secondhand. The constable had not taken my boots, nor the knife lodged in the right one. If I had to, I could be swift.

"Dr. Warthrop," the constable said, "A matter has come to my doorstep that is, to my unhappiness, of great concern to you." The constable had released my shoulder to take out a pipe and nervously fiddle with it.

"Why did you bring a waif to my door, constable? Did you not learn your lesson with Malachi?" The one, Doctor Warthrop, answered. His voice was sharp.

I could feel the constable stiffen, his hand tightening on my shoulder. Malachi, I thought, and what had become of Malachi? Another child whose mention concerning the doctor made my guardian the constable shift uncomfortably.

"It is _the waif_ as you call her, that is of your concern. Pellinore, if there were another option available to me, let it be known that I would take it, but the law demands she be brought here."

The constable clearly knew of misdeeds by the hands of the doctor. Would he prosecute if my knife ended up in this Warthrop's throat? Or might he overlook it, knowing my impetus.

The doctor's face was quite enough to determine what he thought of that pronouncement. He spoke, however, regardless, "What do you mean, constable that the law demands it?"

"You are her next of kin, Pellinore."

Behind the doctor, Pellinore, the boy Will Henry's eyes widened and his eyebrows shot up. He looked from me to Warthrop. The question on the boy's mind, and on the minds of both the doctor and the constable was clear. And so, now that I got a good look at him, was the answer. His hollow cheeks and sharp cheekbones, his dark eyes and hair. All of these things he had given to me. I determined that he would be handsome with a little more meat on his bones. That was how I had found it for myself, pretty when well fed, harrowing when not.

There was a moment where the doctor looked startled, then his face chilled to an icy indifference, "Next of kin, whatever do you mean, constable?"

The constable haltingly explained, "Her mother died, Pellinore, but left her with your address. She told the girl that you were her father. Pellinore look at her, there can be no mistake."

Behind him, Will Henry choked. Pellinore Warthrop glowered at me, "That is impossible." He said with more decisiveness than he had a right to.

I reached down and pulled the battered business card out of my boot and held it out to him, "You left your coat."

Color smeared itself over Pellinore's sharp cheeks. He stood mutely for nearly an entire minutes, eyes fixed on the card. Then, in a sudden recovery he said briskly, "Very well, constable, leave her with me."

He stepped aside and I left the constable on the stoop, walking passed the doctor into the house. Fear at the door closing and being locked inside welled up under my skin. The cryptic reservations of the constable and the dread that emanated from the house itself all adding to my unease.

Of course, being but thirteen years old, there were many things for which I was unequipped. But the handling of fear was not among them. This was no natural talent, but a well hone skill picked up, like all of my other skills, by necessity. My mother, before her death, had had few opportunities to provide me with full time care, and she had died nearly two full years ago. I had spent many days and many nights in city streets in a neighborhood of New York renowned for its foulness. I learned fast that if you let them see that you were afraid, that was enough.

"You see to her care, Pellinore," the constable warned, "I will be quite stringent on that account."

Pellinore, eyes quite fixed on me, closed the door on the constable without answering his demand. His gaze was smothering. Door shut he paced around me, running his long fingers through his dirty hair. I turned with him, not allowing him at my back. I was heavily cognizant of the handle of my knife which pressed comfortingly against my ankle. Will Henry watched me too, his face a mixture of curiosity and compassion.

"What happened to you mother?" Warthrop asked sharply.

"What do you think?" I asked, sneer evident in my voice.

Will Henry flinched.

"Answer the question," he said sharply, "Directly and honestly." His voice bit, demanding and controlling.

There was not a tone of voice in the world that would make me less likely to give a direct and honest answer. Instead I shrugged, "I thought you'd be able to puzzle it out. Aren't you supposed to be smart? Being a doctor and all that?"

Will Henry's eyes widened once more and Pellinore barked, "Of course I can make assumptions. But tell me, give me a full account."

Anger flared up my spine and I mimicked his voice. My voice lent itself to the task, being another gift from him, "It what way, Doctor Warthrop, do you deserve to know the history of my mother?"

He reeled back, anger sharpening his features. But guilt was there too. I smelled it like a festering wound.

"She's dead," I answered, "That is the only thing that matters."

Will spoke before Warthrop got the chance, juxtaposed against the doctor, his voice was soothing, full of compassion and loss, "I'm sorry about your mother."

That must have been how he had fallen under Warthrop's care as well, the death of his parents. It made me soften for him. I would discover that that compassion was one of Will Henry's underlying traits. It made him a good companion to Pellinore, he could pick up where the doctor failed.

Belatedly, as though only realizing that I might be distressed at the death of my mother after Will's outpouring of sympathy, Warthrop moved as though to touch my shoulder. I reacted viscerally to his motion toward me. I jolted backward, twisting out of his reach and sidestepping so the table stood between us. He was taken aback by my extreme reaction but I was unable to allow him even the most innocent seeming of touches. The stricken look of the constable when he handed me off and his sadness when he looked upon Will Henry. The boy Malachi. These things did not speak well of the intentions of Pellinore Warthop's touch.

"What sort of doctor are you?" I asked. I hoped he he talked a bit more I could get a handle on his predilections. Malachi was a boy's name also, there was a chance only Will Henry was in danger here. A pity, but not my problem.

Warthrop looked at Will, who gave back an uncomfortable expression, finally, he said, "If you are going to be residing under this roof it would be futile to attempt to keep it from you, but I doubt you'll find it pleasant."

I shrugged at his warning, my life, thus far, had not been what one might describe as pleasant and I doubted very much that there was anything this doctor could tell me that he did for work that would further mar my view on the overall quality of the world's inhabitants. There had been a man who lived down the hall from my mother and I that I only knew as . He left in the dark and came home in the dark smelling like blood. This doctor could do no worse.

"I am a doctor of aberrant biology, in name, a monstrumologist," he said sort of grandly. The last word, not the only one in the sentence that tripped me up, he pronounced cleanly, not letting any of the many syllables slur together ' _mon-stru-mol-o-gist'_.

I wasn't sure if I was supposed to understand what the devil that meant. Maybe if I could put definition to 'aberrant,' I would have had some idea. As it was, his declaration had not explained anything.

My face scrunched up in confusion, "Thanks for clearing all that up."

He gave me a withering look, "Monstrumology," he continued, his tone becoming lecturing, "is a branch of science concerned with the study and occasional pursuit of monsters."

That word stuck home. "Monsters?" I inquired. If it had been somebody other than this gaunt man who had met me with bloodstains on his collar and eyes of matchless intensity, I would have thought he was lying. "You mean _monsters?_ Werewolf, monsters? Eat children, made of nightmares monsters?" Laughter was in my voice.

His face was stern, although confused at the levity he had brought out of me, "Yes. Monsters. They are as real as you or I. And I study them, with the help of Will Henry. He is my assistant." He had mistaken my laughter as disbelief. But it was not. I had seen enough of the odd things that turned up in black market deals to be less than flabbergasted to find out that somewhere a Chimera might be chowing down on a hapless vagrant.

But really, it was Will Henry who convinced me. He didn't say anything, but his eyes were on me, sorry and concerned. ' _Sorry you have to know,'_ is what his look said. Not the look of a boy with a mad master. But maybe the look of a boy who hunted monsters.

They expected me to be scared, I could see it in their expressions. But I didn't feel fear. Had I really felt no fear? Or had I become too good at feeling fear as excitement. Because I remember the excitement. I remember how the moment I really believed them by heart fluttered and I leaned toward them. But then, I had always known there were monsters, I knew what it was to shanghai sailors and I knew what happened to girls who walked alone at night. Even I, who did not make a habit of reading the papers, was acquainted with the bloodshed in Whitechapel. What Warthrop had told me was only that some of these monsters have very sharp teeth.

But this revelation of what the doctor did, particularly the last bit, that Will Henry was his assistant, was honestly what made me laugh. I felt like a knife was being removed from my side. Rather than instill the horror he obviously thought that it would, it was the most relieving thing he could have ever said.

"So that's why the constable didn't want to leave me here?" I said, carding my hands through my hair and grinning, "Because you take your boy out on monster hunts! That is what befell that Malachi too, then? A monster. He was eaten by a monster? That's all?"

"Yes," he said, confusion and what bordered on revulsion at my laughing where plain in his face, "Malachi was a fifteen year old boy devoured by an anthropophagi and you find this funny?"

Will too seemed distressed at my response, but I just shrugged, "Not funny so much as relieving."

"Relieving?" He asked, it was plain he was truly confused now, "Relieving that my profession is to work with monsters?"

I laughed again, "Yeah, doc, I thought the constable was so broken up about leaving me in your charge because of what you got to with Will Henry. Monsters aren't so bad."

It took him a moment to understand my implication, then, horrified, he looked at Will Henry, who looked equally traumatized, then back at me, "What in god's name would lead you to believe my intentions on Will Henry were anything but professional? He's no more than a boy." His gaze on me intensified, as though he were trying to peer through my skin to what lay beneath.

I shrugged, amused at his disbelief. Back home a girl who assumed the worst of a stranger was just showing good sense.

"Anyway," I said, not wanting to dwell on the now benign threat, "Monsters." My mind was racing with it. He hunted monsters. _Monsters._ Chilly excitement was crawling up my skin.

I had been in petty scraps before, knocked around boys smaller than me for their pocket change, and indeed, been knocked around in turn for mine. There was a certain thrill in it that I had always liked. Something in a fight that made my bones tingle. How might it be to square up with a monster?

"Can you teach me?"

"Teach you?" Warthrop asked, startled.

I leaned forward, "To hunt monsters? Can you teach me?"

He knit his brow together. He turned slowly and looked at Will. His eyes swept over him and his teeth gritted together. Then he looked down at me and I already knew his answer before he gave it. It was an answer I had been given before about a great many things, "No, I can not teach you. It is not... a profession suited to a lady."

Anger leapt up in my heart. But I did not argue. This was, as I had already learned, the way of the world. Being stricken with the affliction of femininity I was cursed to spend my life in need of defense, but forbade the blessing of learning how to defend myself. And, of course, if the need ever arose, it would be held against me that I had left myself defenseless.

This was as I thought at the time. Later, I would give him more credit, that this line about young ladies was, for the most part, only a line. He would have said no if I were a boy too. He did not want to afflict another child with what he had already afflicted Will Henry. That guilt that I had smelled had another source than me.

But just then, in his kitchen and thirteen years old, I was angry at being told that monsters existed with such finality that I had believed it without more than his word and then stripped of the chance to learn to hunt them. But I did not burn as I might have, with injustice. Pellinore Warthrop did not owe me tutelage. He had enlightened me to a variation on an old threat. Not even the moment he refused me in his kitchen did I believe that I would not learn how to fight monsters, only that he would not be the one to teach me.

"Alright," I equivocated, "Don't teach me."

He relaxed at that the roused himself, "I had almost forgotten, what is your name?"

"Annalee," I said, then I paused. I wasn't entirely sure what to use as my surname. It had been Mead, for my mother, but that was no longer correct. When in one of her more doting moments, my mother had told me that women lost their names when their lives went from place to place, and that we used their alterations to separate our lives into pieces. This hadn't been told to me as a bitterness, it was a gift that women were given. Unlike a man, we were allowed the chance to reinvent ourselves with each phase of our lives. Being too young to do more than take her word for it, this was the principle I operated under.

I finished with a shrug, "Warthrop."

This operated on the doctor like a blow to the stomach, whose entire body flinched and he spun away, heading in long and purposeful strides toward a heavy door that led off the kitchen, "Take her upstairs, Will Henry, give her a spare room. I am not to be disturbed. Snap to, Will Henry." Then he slammed the door.

"I'm sorry," Will said, "You won't find the doctor very welcoming."

I shrugged, "What's it like being his apprentice? Do you hunt monsters too?"

He looked down, "Yes, he takes me with him, but mostly it's just fetching him things and helping him with necropsies."

I scrunched up my face with confusion.

"Oh," he said, "In the basement, he cuts open monsters to study their anatomy. Do you want me to show you to your room?"

I didn't. I wanted to keep asking him about monsters. But he looked exhausted and there would be time enough for questions later, "Yes, please."

He led me up a flight of stairs and to the largest bedroom I had ever been in. It was covered in dust in most places that bespoke years of disuse. Some spots though, around the bed and across a dresser where wiped clean. _Someone_ had used the room recently.

Will did not follow me inside, "If you need something my room is in the attic, you can knock." He started to turn away then turned back, "It'll be nice to have someone else here. Sometimes living with the doctor can be lonely."

Haunted eyed though might be, this boy was squishier and softer than most boys I had encountered. I could hardly help but like him. "Thanks, Will, night."

"Goodnight."

He retreated up the hall and I closed my new bedroom door.

I spun in a slow circle, looking at my room. It was grand and old fashioned with hangings on the bed and elaborate detail work on the furnishings. I collapsed on the bed and looked up at the hangings. Before I extinguished the lamp I took stock of the whole room.

I had slept in many different places. My mother had a hard time keeping us in one apartment, so we moved up and down the slums. She had sometimes left me for weeks or months at a time in an orphanage. After my mother had died rooms had been in an even faster rotation. Sometimes I worked for a day to get a roof over my head, or cleaned up hotels enough that they let me stay in a back room.

Eccentric doctor be damned, this was the first room I had ever slept in that was not occupied with cockroaches and bedbugs. Also one of the few rooms I had slept in where there was almost no worry at all about someone else sneaking up on my in the middle of the night. Having gotten a good measure of the two of them already, the only night time visitors I could imagine was Will making sure I was alright or the doctor standing in the doorway to brood.

I turned and blew out the lamp and fell quickly to sleep.

With nothing else to wear the next morning than the ill fitting dress forced upon me by the well meaning constable, I came downstairs wearing the same thing I had both slept in and worn the day before.

In the kitchen, Will Henry was already up and cooking breakfast, eggs and pancakes. He looked livelier after he had slept, and smiled at me when he saw me.

"Good morning, Anna," he said, then went a hair pink, "Is it alright, if I call you Anna?"

Usually I went by 'Lee,' But Will sounded so sweet saying Anna I let him use the softer of my names.

Eating next to him I asked, "How long have you lived with…" I stalled, unsure what to call him. Having taken Warthrop as a name myself, I couldn't exactly call him that. 'The Doctor' sounded too formal and Pellinore too familiar. Father was out of the question.

"More than a year," he said, "My father worked for him, when my parents died he took me in."

"Sorry," I said, repeating his sentiment from the night before, "About your parents."

"Thank you," he replied, looking down at his pancakes, "Where were you, before here?"

"New York," I told him.

"The Monstrumologist Society has a colloquium in New York, every year."

"Yeah?" I asked, "I didn't get to many colloquiums while I was there."

Before he had given voice to a reply the good doctor himself joined us, bursting in from the basement door.

"Will Henry, what are you doing?"

"Eating breakfast, sir," he said, "You should eat something too."

He waved away Will's concern, "Snap to, Will Henry, I need you downstairs, I-" His gaze was heavy and cloying to be the subject of. He looked like he had forgotten that I existed. "Oh, yes. Annalee." Then he frowned, "Have you nothing else to wear, Annalee?"

I looked back at the same disheveled clothes he had been in the night before, further mussed by another night of work, "Have you?"

"Will, take her into town, outfit her with necessary supplies, then come back at once. I require your assistance."

I, who was very hungry, was unhappy to leave most of my breakfast to go cold, "Can't we finish eating?"

He scowled, "What? Oh, how much must you eat?"

I made a noise of disbelief that can only be truly sounded by a teenager and rose to my feet, abandoning my breakfast along with Will.

"Snap to, Annalee, I need Will Henry as soon as possible."

Something in the snap to made me entirely unable to do as he commanded. I dropped back into my seat and took up my fork again.

"What are you doing, Annalee, I told you to go with Will."

I made a huffy sound, "Will made me breakfast, I'm going to finish it." I returned to my meal, eating slower even than I needed to.

He did not seem to be equipped to handle my defiance, so accustomed he was to being obeyed. "Annalee while you reside under my roof-"

I looked up, "You require me to leave meals half finished to suit your whim?"

"I require Will Henry."

"Why don't you sit down and eat something, I'm sure by the time you're done cleaning up from breakfast we will be returned and you can go down to your dungeon and do whatever it is that you do."

"I will not be dictated to in my own home!"

"Fine, do whatever you want. I am going to finish my breakfast, that seems a small thing to ask."

"Finish your breakfast then," He said, "Come downstairs as soon as you are back, Will Henry." And once more, he disappeared into the dungeon.

I kept on eating and after a moment's hesitation, Will sat back down and finished his meal alongside me. I could not tell if he was impressed or dismayed.

When we returned from town I went upstairs to wash up and Will went down into the basement to help the doctor however it was that he helped him. These were hours that belonged to he and Will alone. I was neither invited downstairs nor privy to what happened there. He must have told Will to keep it under wraps, because after the first time, when he defined necropsy for me, he would never speak of it again.

Those hours marked great swaths of time that I had entirely to myself. The first time it happened I thought that I would revel in it. I replaced the little shoes I had been procured and put back on my sturdy boots under my new dress. And out the door I went.

The town was such that I had never seen before. Where I had been at home on unending pavement and dirty buildings, New Jerusalem was all green grass, with sparkling summertime dew. A little white church stood on the hill. When storybooks tell you what good days are made of, they talk about this town. Barring, maybe, the monster house down the lane.

But regardless, it took me fifteen minutes to get bored wandering up and down the cobbled streets. After New York this felt like a ghost town, and after learning that monsters crept through the dark, scrounging through rural Mom and Pop Shops seemed dull at best.

So I returned for my short lived adventure, bored and lamenting what was quickly becoming the least exciting days of my life. At home I had been able to scrounge up pocket money rolling dice on the street, or indeed, lifting it from someone's pocket. But it was not something I had a natural predilection for and I knew on the onset that there was no place in New Jerusalem with enough bustle for that.

Besides that, if I got myself into any sort of sticky situation, I would not be a blur of a face that could run off into a street. The constable would know me right off, probably, in pity, send me back to my father rather than outfit me with charges. And somehow I did not want to be on the butt end of it when Pellinore Warthrop discovered that I had been thieving my first day here.

So, back to the glum house full of secrets to which I was not privy.

They were still in the basement when I got there and, through the door, I could hear the drone of my father's lecturing, but not at all well enough to turn it into decipherable words. I retreated from the door, unable to open it without alerting them, for the door was too heavy and would surely creak.

Instead I crept into his library. I was not entirely sure I was allowed in his library, but it was in the main house and not shut by any doors, so I determined to appologize if he took issue, rather than ask him for permission.

The library was in disarray, with books stacked into heaps that were nearly toppling over, small bits of paper peeking out of some of them and strewn across a desk. About a third of them were written in a tidy hand, the rest in a scrawl so desperate I could not make it out.

I had never been much taken with books. I'd been to a bit of school, of course, but I had never progressed from my readers into full volumes. And, mother having never been one to keep books around, my literary education had stalled.

But these books were about monsters. I selected one at random and let it fall open in my palms. The pages were thin and vellumy and the text was so tiny and cramp I almost got a headache just from looking at it. I flipped through it, hoping for illustrations of some gruesome beast, but was let down. I found the rest of the library equally as lacking.

I wandered the house in boredom for another hour, poking my head into crevices and nooks, every room but Pellinore's bedroom and Will's.

Were I not so bored and were I able to convince myself that it was Pellinore's effort I was easing rather than Will's, I would not have done it. But Will had soft eyes and a sweet voice and I very much so wanted him to like me. So I cleaned up from breakfast and explored every inch of the kitchen until I found where everything went.

I thought of taking money where Will had for my clothes and getting food to make dinner. But I did not. I would not play housekeeper to Warthrop if he would not let me also play apprentice.

It wasn't till long after dark that they emerged from their confinement. Will yawned his way up the stairs, looking bedraggled and tired, his eyes lit up when he saw me. I had broken down and made some sort of dinner from the food in the house. After all, I was also quite hungry and unprecedentedly bored.

Pellinore Warthrop was a different beast entirely. While he had looked nearly pleasant coming up from the basement, a wild sort of joy in his dark eyes, when he saw me all of it fell away. He was masked again in iciness that revealed nothing.

I looked away from him. I had not expected our meeting to be warm. I had held no illusions of a strong and tall father sweeping me up into his arms and peering at my face only to exclaim, "My girl! You are so plainly my daughter, for you bear my eyes." Then doted on my with wonderstruck affection. Dreamed of it perhaps, what girl in my position would not? But I had not thought this would be how it would happen.

But I had also not been prepared for the aggressive chilliness that he was casting my way. What had I done to deserve such bold indifference, and indeed dislike, from a man I had known all of two days?

I began my own meal without looking again at my father. Calling him that, even in my head, felt unsettling. I couldn't imagine his reaction if I let it slip into my vernacular.

"Thanks, Anna," Will said, taking a plate for himself and sitting down at my side.

The doctor, or Pellinore, or my father, also took a plate and sat across from us both. He was still wearing a heavy apron that was covering in rather gooey debris. He ate in absolute silence, scowling all the while at the mediocre food I had provided.

"You made this just from what was around?" Will asked, "We had nearly nothing."

I shrugged, rather taken with the compliment, "I'm alright at using up scraps."

In a stodgy and formal tone, Pellinore asked from across the table, "Did you cook often, for your mother?"

"Nah," I replied briefly, "Just when I was on my own."

"On your own?" He asked with renewed sharpness, "When were you on your own? I was given to understand that you came here directly upon the death of your mother? Did she leave you alone often, Annalee?"

My story had slipped of its own accord. I hadn't realized all the little pieces I had to keep track of to tell even such an easy lie as this. My face turned pink, "I just said I came here after she died, didn't say when." But I didn't look at him.

Thunder built up his voice and I could hardly help but flinch back from it, "I refuse to be lied to, Annalee, you will tell me at once the entire account of your coming here. Did you or did you not come directly here upon the death of your mother? Is that not what you told me?"

I pushed food around on my plate, my stomach clenching, "Yes."

"Yes, what? Yes that that is what you told me or yes you came here directly?"

Sudden fury clipped up my spine and I looked up at him with shining eyes, "Yes, that is what I told you but _no_ I did not come here directly. This was my very last resort!"

He had risen, steepling his fingers on the table, "There is a place in hell reserved, so says Dante, for those who lose their tempers without cause!"

I slammed my fork onto the table, "Then I'm sure it would really be Hell because I don't doubt you would be there!"

"Do _not_ raise your voice to me, Annalee!"

"Then you don't raise your voice back, _father._ "

This had the intended result and he bit back his retort. He went so still he might have been confused for a statue. Then he said in a voice cold but no longer loud, "You will tell me what happened, in every detail."

I no longer had the option of the very clever lie I had thought up, but could tell him the truth. I could not even allow myself to think the truth. I answered meekly, "She died two years ago."

"Two years?" He asked, "And what have you been doing since then? How did you live? How did you sustain yourself? You are barely more than a child."

For a moment I shook so violently that I couldn't speak, my throat clenched too tightly to speak. Fury burned under my skin. Too much for my little body. It overcame me how fury often does, particularly when it is mixed with old wounds and no lack of fear. Tears slid out of my eyes and down the sharp features of my face, but no words would emerge.

He moved with such suddenness that I thought the was going to strike me and I flinched toward the knife that I still kept in my boot. But he did not, he retreated to the door of his basement, giving me a final, chilly look, stripped entirely of emotion.

When he was gone, all of the fury burnt out and I felt the full force of the loneliness that had been my constant companion for as long as I could remember crushed back down upon me.

For the briefest of seconds Will reached out and touched my hand. He looked at me with so much compassion I nearly melted into him. I would have melted into him, clung to his shoulders and cried. But he was called away.

" _Will Henry! Will Henreeeeee!"_

The days to follow proved no respite to my loneliness, Will was kept on such a tight leash that I barely saw him except during hurried meals or as he dragged himself to bed. The doctor refused to even acknowledge that I was living beneath his roof.

I tried, harder this time, to read the doctor's books, and would spend hours laboring over a few pages, hardly able to draw any meaning from the cramped words. It did not help that half of them meant nothing to me and I was forced to drag out his enourmous dictionary and look them up, only to not understand the definitions.

I wandered, bored, through the small quaint town, climbing where I ought not, swinging from tree boughs and scampering onto church roofs. It was in so doing that I got in my first spot of trouble. And it was trouble, regardless of how much fun I derived from it.

I was minding my own business, kicking a stone down a cobbled street when I heard them. They whistled and hooted at me as I passed. Were it the sort of whistling broads got on docks, I would've moved first, but it wasn't quite that sort. A small gang of boys, although quite a clean gang, lurked under the awning of a butcher's shop. The hooting was more of the fear and bullying sort.

"Where you goin', New York Street Rat!" the leader of them shouted, "Oh, boys, where you think the mad doctor's bastard is runnin' to?"

Of course the story of a vagabond girl appearing at the doorstep of the infamous Dr. Warthrop had made its rounds among the town's youth. I wasn't of a mood to ignore them. It'd been a long while now since I had been in a fight and the itch was on me.

I made right for them, "What's that, you snot nosed, mug!" I shouted.

The boys drew back, surprised at my forthright and antagonistic response. But they would not be frightened away. They might have been, if I had been wearing the dirty trousers and shirt I had used in the city. But Will had been kind enough to get me a rather fashionable dress, so my ability to intimidate was a bit hampered.

The biggest among them, a boy of fifteen or so, strode right up to me, thumbs tucked under his suspenders, grin up his face, "Tongue like that really mucks with your pretty face, you little bird, how bout I-"

I did not give him time to finish. I could have run, I was not far from Harrington Lane and surely could have gotten back before they caught up, or, I suppose, I could have ignored them from the jump. I did neither of those things. But with my wrist held straight as I had seen the big thugs do it on in Manhattan back alleys, I punched him, square in the nose.

I wasn't so big, being a girl, and mostly underfed kept me from big muscles and broad shoulders. But unlike the cods that had whistled at me from the streets of this cozy little town, I'd been in a fight before. Real fights too. Kids even as small as me didn't fall totally out of the gang fights that sometimes gripped whole streets. Especially if you wanted to be there, which I always did.

The knife down my boot saved my skin one time when I got tied up in a brawl with some of the Whyo's, one of the tough gangs all us kids pretended to be part of. Kid came at me, bout the size of the one I had just punched, but he had a knife in his hand, ready to gut the first thing he could. My knife did her first singing in that brawl, keeping that boy off me.

So these soft New England brats weren't nothing. I kept my knife in my boot though, surmising that they had mothers and fathers that might miss them if I put a blade up their throats.

The first one fell back with a cry, both hands going up to his nose, blood pouring out. I smiled and leapt back, turning on instinct to catch his mate who had swung at me. His punch was wild and I ducked it, coming up inside his reach and belting him upside the head. He too, let out a wail. There were too many though, for me to get away clean.

The third got the jump on me while I was dealing with his friend and cracked me in the eye. My head snapped back and I felt the burn of pain where his fist had connected. I hooted, laughter erupting from my lips. That, more than anything, got my blood up. Tingling came into my bones the way it did when there was a fight on. I swung around and pummeled my assailant, once, twice, thrice, until he was on the ground. Then I was on him, his two unstruck friends trying to pull me off.

I kicked one of them in the groin and they both released me. I fell on that third boy, knees on either side of his chest, cracking my fist into his face. Not enough to really hurt him, just to wet my knuckles with a little bit of blood.

Then I was wrenched off.

The butcher had come out of his shop, rotund and imposing. He held me up off the street by the shoulders, nearly pressed against his bloody apron. He tossed me behind him and I fell on my bottom onto the street.

"You get out of here, all of ya! Go on, run along!"

Shrugging and happy that I was not going to be carted off back to my father, or indeed to the constable, I ran, blood running happily in my veins.

My skirt was dirty and my hair was disheveled. I had blood on my knuckles, a black eye, and the biggest smile I had worn since New York. I almost hoped that Warthrop would be upstairs in Harrington Lane when I got back and interview me on my activities.

He was in the library when I got back, I could hear him holding court over poor Will from the kitchen. I couldn't imagine how Will stayed awake for those dull lectures, nor how he could turn a subject so interesting: monsters, into such a boring exercise.

I scrounged around the kitchen for a few minutes, seeing if there was anything I could patch together into a meal, not feeling as though I should go back down the street for groceries just now. I thought I could make some sort of stew. I dragged out the meager ingredients and dumped them on the counter.

Then, without knocking, I walked into the library, "You hungry, Will?" I asked, cheekily ignoring the doctor, who had cut himself off at my entrance.

"Oh," he said, surprised at my entrance, but smiling, "Um, yes." Then he frowned, "What happened to your eye?"

In two long strides the doctor had crossed the room to me and gripped me by the chin, tilting my face to his. I had not yet been this close to him and recoiled, he smelled like death and chemicals. Then, ever observant, he snatched my bloodied hand, "Have you been _fighting?"_ He asked with incredulity.

Chin still gripped in his cold fingers I gave him my most shit eating grin and said, "What's it look like?" I had already learned that he could not tolerate his questions being answered by questions.

"Who in God's name were you fighting?"

I shrugged, "Boys down the street."

"Are you alright?" Will, sweet Will, asked from behind the doctor. He had gotten up too and was looking concernedly at my wounds.

"I cannot imagine that if she is well enough to be smart mouthing me she is not in intolerable pain," the doctor said.

I laughed, and pulled my chin out of the doctor's grasp. I looked at Will, ignoring Warthrop, "I'm alright, Will, thank you for your concern, you're sweet."

He went a little pink.

Warthrop drew away from me and straightened, clasping his hands behind his back. I could see he was trying to keep calm, "I let you out from my attention for one single afternoon and you pick a fight and black your eye?"

I sneered, "All due respect, Pellinore, but I've been out from under your attention for a lot more than a single afternoon." As much as I was enjoying myself, taunting him a little, I didn't want to elaborate my experience with fighting. More than one had ended up on the business side of the little knife in my boot. Course, I had a few scars from ending up on the business side of someone else's. On both accounts I did not believe the doctor and I would see eye to eye.

"Be that as it may," the doctor said, control slipping minutely from his tone, "You are now under my authority and I forbid you from fighting."

I pushed hair back behind my ears and tried to give him an innocent look, "Forbid me?" I asked almost mockingly, "So if I get jumped I just have to let 'em do their worst?"

He heaved an exasperated sigh, "No, of course not, is that what occurred? Did you instigate the fight or was it purely self defense."

"They gave me lip, so I gave them hell."

"Them? How many were there?"

I straightened and preened, "Five, all of 'em older too. Got down four before the butcher broke it up. If I'da had time I could have dropped the lot of 'em."

"You came out the better for a fight with five boys, all older than you?" He asked.

I grinned happily, "I'm good in a fight." This was something I was proud of.

His tone came down hard, "That is not something in which you ought to hold pride."

I had a glorious and short lived daydream of punching him square in his sneering face, but I found I was not able to. The fight just went out of me. I slumped my shoulders and stared at the carpet, "Won't happen again."

"See that it doesn't."

I crept out of the room and back into solitude, wishing he would at least release Will so that I might have someone to talk to.

He didn't for two long weeks he didn't, keeping Will so closely at his side the poor boy spent all of his time near feinting from lack of sleep and nourishment. Regarding me, he had returned to his original method of acting as though I was not there.

As much as I wanted to be above it, I spend evenings in tears in my pillows, biting down on them to remain silent. My days consisted of a lethargy borne of loneliness and despair compounded by boredom.

A month into my incarceration at the doctor's house, I was roused from laying dejectedly on my bed by a soft knocking on my door frame.

"Hi, Will," I said. Excitement at even this lifted me out of the bed with a smile.

"The doctor is shut up in his room, I was wondering if you wanted to play cards, I stole some from him." He asked me, sheepishly grinning.

I might have cried I was so thrilled by the offer, "Thank you Will, yes!" I exclaimed, kissing his cheek in adoration for this break in my boredom.

He shuffled his feet, "I don't really know any games, but I thought you might."

"I'll teach you," I proclaimed. I knew poker, which me and the dirty boys from my street back home had taught me, they having learned from fathers and older brothers. But I knew other games too that had been more suited to my young and ill funded crew.

Will and I sat on my bedroom floor, cross legged and facing each other, the doctor's stolen cards laid out before us. I taught him one of my old favorites, which he caught onto quickly.

It consisted of flipping cards in rapid succession, slapping down your hand when one was turned up that you wanted. By our sixth game it had devolved mostly into slapping each other's hands and giggling.

"You're cheating!" He playfully accused, when I snatched cards right out from under his hands.

"I am not!" I protested in mock hurt, "I am just better at it than you are!"

He shoved my shoulder at that, and I took advantage of his eyes leaving the cards to snatch a winning hand. I squeeled in delight.

"You see!" He said, "Cheating!"

We broke into giggles, dropping our cards and laughing until our sides hurt.

"Will Henry," the barking command came from behind us in the doorway. We both twisted around. The doctor stood imposingly in the doorway, scowling. "What are you doing, Will Henry?"

He answered in the demure tone he regularly used for the doctor, "Playing cards, sir."

"I can see that, why? I called for you."

He got up, abandoning the cards on the floor, "I'm sorry, sir! I didn't hear you."

"It does not matter, did you go to the bakery and fetch scones?"

"I did, sir, yesterday."

"There are no scones in the kitchen, Will Henry!"

"You finished them, sir, last night."

"Oh, did I? I can't seem to remember. Fetch more, will you, before the bakers closes. Snap to, Will Henry. I must speak with Annalee."

Will scampered off to do his bidding and I slowly picked up the cards, already missing Will. I both dreaded and took joy in his acknowledgement of my existence.

"Annalee," he said haltingly, then with more sharpness, "Why are you wearing trousers?" I had reverted to my old style of dress when in the house, more comfortable to be sure.

I looked up at him, "Why are you?"

"Did Will Henry not supply you with adequate clothing?"

"Will did just fine with my clothing," I said, not wanting my choices to backfire on the poor boy, "Never mind the trousers, didn't you have something to say? Why does it matter what I'm wearing?"

Shrugging, as if to admit that it indeed did not matter what I was wearing, he straightened his back, clasping his hand behind it and began what sounded like a rehearsed soliloquy. The moment he started speaking his voice fell into a soporific lecturing tone "As surprised as I am at your existence," he drones, "and as unfit as I might be for your care, it is my responsibility to see, at the very least, that you be properly educated."

I rolled up onto my feet, crossing my arms over my chest. There had been quite a gap in my education. My mother had bundled me off each morning to the children's school for the first nine or ten years of my life, but after that I had been kept home to do other people's laundry to help keep food on the table. Even when I had been in school, I had never much taken to it.

Pellinore continued, "I have just received word that you will be given attendance at the West Chariot School for Girls in London this September. It is the sister school to the boy's preparatory academy that I attended. I do expect that you will give your studies your absolute attention and cause me no embarrassment by your performance. However, in order to ensure that you are adequately prepared, you will spend the rest of the summer under my direct tutelage. We will begin this afternoon, but you must first tell me, sparing no detail, the history of your previous education. What, for instance, is your proficiency with Greek or Latin."

I did not know which prospect seemed less appealing. Being tutored by Pellinore or being shipped off to a girls' school. "Whatever you think is best, Pellinore," I said, more than a little sarcasm in my voice.

He looked rather taken aback, I saw him half mouth ' _Pellinore.'_

I laughed a little cruely, "Would you rather I called you, Papa?"

This made his entire body recoil and I laughed again. He said, shortly, "I suppose Pellinore will...suffice." He continued again, "Your education, Annallee, detail what you have been provided thus far."

For some reason, I felt embarrassed to reveal the sparseness of my education, "I went to a little schooling, until I was about nine, then I got pulled out. Never went back, after my mother died I didn't have time."

"She pulled you out of school?" He asked mystified, "Surely nothing was of higher importance than your education. For what reason would your mother pull you out of it?"

I laughed helplessly, "So I could work, Pellinore and so we could eat. You didn't exactly have an affair with a countess."

Color was crawling up his neck, "I see, and what did she have you doing?"

"Laundry, mostly."

He looked relieved that I had not taken up the darker calling of poor young girls, "Were to introduced to Greek or Latin, even in rudimentaries?"

"You must not have to be very quick to be a monstrumologist."

He scowled, "No Greek or Latin then, we will have to begin your instruction if you are going to be ready to be taught with those your age next year."

"I know a little Greek," I conceded, and he looked interested, "Boy who lived next door was Greek, Aleixo, he taught me to speak a little. Well, he taught me to cuss."

"I am speaking about classical Greek, a far cry from the street language of immigrants."

I shrugged, "Whatever you say, but if you stumbled on a Sphinx right now I bet she'd sound more like Aleixo than Homer."

"But Homer is of more literary consideration."

"You will come with me to the library for instruction, come now, Annalee."

Heaving a sigh, I followed him downstairs and into his dusty library. Once there he drew out a heavy tome from his bookcase and dropped it into my hands, "You will begin with that."

I thought he would leave me there to read the dusty book and hopefully glean some knowledge out of it. But he did not.

He started pacing back and forth in front of me, hands behind his back. "The history of the Greeks, Annalee, dates back to the earliest stretches of our known history. Their literary and artistic culture as well as their formative political ideas and democratic notions form the backbone of Western Civilization. It is for this reason that the careful study of the classical Greek language is of utmost importance.." He continued in this vein without pausing for longer than I could believe. I did not know if I should be more mystified that he had so much to say on such a dull matter or bored senseless.

I dropped my head to the side and laid it against the cushion of the chair looking out the window and the brilliant day out of doors. Who would have ever thought that living alongside a monster hunter would ever be this boring?

What I really wanted to be doing was running outside, finding some boy to get into another scrape with. Not Will, he didn't seem like the scrappy sort, his heart was too big. But I missed the adrenaline of it, the pulses that shot up my spine with both blows that connected and blows that I dodged.

"Annalee," He said sharply, "Annalee, what did I just say?"

I thought about making something up but couldn't drum up the energy, staring out the window I said, "I don't know, I wasn't really listening."

Looking back at the rebellious and defensive child that I was then, I wonder if it could have turned out any other way. What might have transpired if Pellinore Warthrop had been a kind man as well as a good one? Or if it had been he who had indulged my voracity for his profession. Would I not have ended up where I am? Was it chance or my own design that led me to this place? With this particular man asleep beside me not quite a decade after my father nearly put me to sleep with his lecturing. How might I have altered course if I had spent the span of the next decade alongside the estimable Will Henry? I would have been a better person, to be sure, for how could he not have rubbed off on me at least somewhat?

I am not wholly convinced of either fate or choice being entirely to blame. Yes, I have taken myself here, I have been active in my own fortune telling, but I was not the only actor on the stage. There were times when my hand was forced, and, of course, there was meeting exactly the wrong man at exactly the wrong time.

But I am skipping ahead, months ahead, when I would be out of the relatively safe shelter of Pellinore Warthrop's protection and very far away indeed from the sweet influence of Will Henry.

At the time, lounging in that chair and fighting a nap, I could imagine no worse place on earth than this library, dull and stuffy, filled with Pellinore's prattling and woefully free of monsters.

He was still glaring at me, egging me on to respond to him when Will saved me. My good Will. He rushed in with his paper bag of scones and said hurriedly, "There is something delivered for you, sir, waiting outside."

"What is that, Will Henry? A package, from whom?"

"Dr. Leonard Bruxley, it says, sir," he said.

The doctor almost bristled in anticipation, "Bring it in, Will Henry, bring it in."

"Yes, sir, I did, sir. I put it in the basement."

"Good boy, Will Henry!" He said, elated, "Come now, Will Henry, snap to, we must see what it is, did it come with a letter?"

"Yes, sir," he said, handing the letter over.

The doctor tore into, his eyes wild, " _Felis Verulentus,_ Will Henry!" He said without a second glance to me, "Snap to, Will Henry!"

This proved to be the ending of my private tutelage with my father. For the next seven days he was wild with obsession, calling Will out of bed at odd hours to return to the basement and pour over the thing he had been sent. On the eighth day, I was woken by Will before dawn, his coat on and looking apologetic.

"Anna," he said when I woke, "The doctor left you a note, but I wanted to wake you, we are leaving, we will be back soon he says, in time to send you to school."

I sat up and rubbed the sleep from my eyes, "Oh, you're leaving? Will you be alright?"

"Yes," he said, although he didn't look particularly certain, "Sorry to leave you alone, Anna."

I pulled him into my arms, he seems surprised but returned the embrace.

"Ah, Annalee, you are awake." It was the doctor, interrupting our goodbye.

Will hurriedly disentangled himself from me and the doctor addressed me again, "We are being called away, I have left money for you to provide for yourself, do not neglect your studies. We should have returned by the time you must be off for school, but if we are not, I will send you instruction on making your own way there."

And that was all that was said of the matter by my dear father.

I returned to giving my farewells to Will, "Be careful, Will," I said pulling him close again, "How should I ever stand Pellinore alone if you do not come back."

"Be here when I do?" He asked. His smile was big and warm, like it always was.

"Then come back soon," I said, "I'll even get scones when I see you coming, so you won't have to run off on errands on the very second of your return."

"Will Henry!" Pellinore shouted from the cab, "What is delaying you, Will Henry?" 

In a fit of girlishness I kissed Will on the cheek for the second time, "Good luck, Will."

They did not come back in time to see me off to school.

On the first of August I received the following missive, Pellinore's words in Will's hand.

 _Annalee,_

 _Regrettably we will not be able to return in time to see you off. Enclosed are boarding passes for your passage as well as instructions. Write to alert me that you have reached your destination safely._

 _Your Father,_

 _Dr. Pellinore Warthrop_

 _p.s. I'm sorry you'll be gone by the time we get back, I'll miss you. Will you write to me? I will write to you. I would like to count you as a friend, Anna, it's been a relief to have you at the house. - Will_

I tore Will's post script from the bottom and folded it into my pocket, leaving my father's correspondence on the kitchen table. The train that would take me to port I would cross the ocean from was leaving the next morning, so there was no chance of them chancing to come home before I departed.

I felt sorrier than I thought I would to miss Will, although I harbored none of those feelings for the doctor. I had to go and buy a suitcase, not having one myself, as well as the list of necessary equipment that Pellinore had attached to his sorry excuse for a letter. I packed and repacked that suitcase seven times before it was late enough to go to sleep.

Before I went I sat down at the desk in my bedroom and wrote the first letter I had ever written. Although the letter was short it took me a long time, both to make sure my writing was legible and to be as honest as I wanted to be. Yes will, I would like to count you as a friend.

 _Will,_

 _Of course I'll write you. But you have to promise to write back. Tell me everything that you can about your trip and how brave you were hunting monsters. I'm afraid to go off to school, Will. I don't think I'm going to do well._

 _But Will, I want to thank you for how sweet you were. I know you didn't have much time or energy after chasing after the doctor but you were the nicest anyone has ever been to me. Of course I count you as a friend._

 _Yours,_

 _Anna_

I left the note under his pillow where he would find it when he got home.

I crawled into bed and blew out my lamp and lay beneath the covers. In the dark, with my eyes screwed shut against it, I began to cry. Reason had little to do with it. I had lived in bare bones tenement buildings and gotten in knife fights. I had nearly starved on the streets and made a hard earned way alone in the city. But I had never been more frightened than I was at the thought of going off to this school all on my own.

Of all the people in the world I could have had at my side, I would not have wished for any of them but Will Henry. I felt foolish and silly thinking so, I knew him hardly at all. Certainly I had lived in his proximity all summer, but we had not spent great tracts of time together. It was his eyes that drew me in, big and warm and horror struck. Will Henry who wanted to be my friend and hugged me even though I could do nothing for him.

But, of course, Will was not here. He was with my father hunting monsters I was not allowed to know about. And so I slept one last night alone in the big house.

 _Dear Will,_

 _I keep thinking of you being eaten by monsters in some wilderness. Please write me and tell me that you are alright. I miss you, Will. More than I ought to for how briefly we lived together. You were so kind to me, Will, kinder than anyone ever has been. And with nothing that you could ever gain from it. I wanted you to know, Will._

 _I made it to the school alright, intact at least. But that's the end of the stories that end well. I couldn't do it, Will. Everybody knew Greek and spoke French, they knew what forks to use and had only ever used knives to cut up steaks. I was so lonely, Will. More lonely than I've ever been. I couldn't keep my head above water in classes. I was behind in everything. How do they read so fast? I did try to be good. Really, Will. I know Pellinore won't believe it, but I tried so hard. I wore the uniform and I tried to be nice to people, I tried to learn how read French poetry._

 _I survived for two months, not quite even that, Will, five weeks. I was failing everything. They were going to kick me out. And, Will, I didn't care. I couldn't sleep at night for thinking of monsters. Although I tried, I could concentrate on nothing else. I forgot to eat thinking of them. I could not stay here._

 _I know this is asking too much of you, Will, but don't tell my father. He is going to get a letter from the school telling him that I am progressing well, I sent one also to the school in your hand, from him. I told them He was sending me home, that there was a family emergency. I'm sorry, Will, but can we be friends if I do not tell you all of my secrets?_

 _I am on my own in London now, Will, it is not so different from New York. Pellinore sent money with me for spending during school. That got me started. I find work to keep me going. Don't worry about me, this is what I know. I am going to find someone to teach me about Monsters, Will. I have to._

 _I've included an address so you can write me. Don't forget. I am worried about you._

 _With affection,_

 _Anna_

I reread the letter until I could recite my own words in my head without looking. Then I crumpled the letter and threw it away in the wastebasket in the corner of my scrappy little London flat. On a fresh paper, I wrote.

 _Will,_

 _I hope you made it home more or less in one piece. I would hate to think of you torn to bits in some wilderness. I miss you._

 _Let Pellinore know that I made it to school alright, and that it is going well. School is better than I thought it would be, Will. I'm not the top of my class or anything, but I'm doing alright. I've made some friends too, so I am not as lonely as I thought that I would be. One of them, Helena, you would like, she taught me to balance a spoon on my nose. I'll show you when I return in the summer._

 _Write soon, Will._

 _With affection,_

 _Anna_

This letter I closed and sealed, addressing it clearly on the envelope. I would send that to Will, and Pellinore would have already gotten the missive I wrote on thieved school stationery concerning my scholastic progress.

I dressed myself in clothes I had bought using some of Pellinore's money. Boy's trousers and a shirt, a heavy rucksack. I cut my hair at the shoulders, a rather fashionable length for young men, and bound it up. Thus disguised I roamed rather undisturbed through the streets.

I had yet to discover anything about monsters, but I was on the lookout. Unfortunately, living on one's own was not free and Pellinore's money was not endless. He had only supplied me with enough for a school girl's pocket money, not keeping a little flat and buying my own food. Fortunately, I was not without my own means.

On the third day of my liberation, I had found the crack in the city I had been looking for. Every city had them, I only had to find London's. And find it I most certainly did. In the alley behind a dirty pub I could make a winner's fee and a cut of the house's take on bets if I fought other boys in the street. It kept me in untorn clothes and a room of my own, well fed and contented.

I had always had a proclivity for it, the rush of my blood in my veins was matched truly by no other thing. It got my blood up and made my bones sing. What I might have lacked in muscle and raw power, I made up for in quickness and brutality. I had won nearly every one of my bouts and, among the early comers who watched the scraps between boys, somewhat of a favorite.

I always stayed after to watch the men. I watched what made them lose and what made them win. I watched where they hit and how they moved their feet. I'd spend whole evenings looking only at fighting men's feet. I counted this as training. If I didn't know where to find monsters, I would be ready for them when they got to me.

In the hours before dark, when there was no fighting to be had, I crawled up fireladders to the roofs of buildings. I climbed and leapt, teaching myself to slide down banisters and flip my body over. This and the fighting made my body lean and hard. In my limited thirteen year old logic I thought that if I was ready for monsters, they would come to find me.

The logic, of course, is flawed. There was no reason for monsters to hunt me, or to seek me out, or come upon me in the dark. But regardless, they did find me. Or, I ought to say, he found me.

While it was happening I did think that it would be the end of my days, but afterward it proved to be naught but the beginning. The liquefaction of a caterpillar in a chrysalis.

It was the dead of night and I was still on the street. I had stayed for too long watching a particularly vicious pair of men pummel each other and now had to scurry back through black streets. Usually I made myself leave before they were done, so that I might get back home before the streets were entirely unlit. But not tonight. The fighting had been too good, the winner to quick on his feet. I had watched until the very end, so enthralled that every thought of my own safety died.

I paid for my oversight, forced to make it home in the dangerous dark. But, as always, I forgot to register my fear. I ought to have, if it had been working properly my body would have been full of it, kicking my to sprint through the lightest parts of the street and not stop until I was tucked away at home. But I did not, and took my regular route, through alleys and unlit streets.

It was halfway home, in an alley thick with darkness, I first felt it. The hairs on the back of my neck raised. I swiveled around, looking wildly behind me. Having seen nothing I turned back, quickening my steps down the alley. My gut churned and I could feel him behind me, creeping closer. I was certain that even if someone _were_ following me, I could outmaneuver him. I could not, of course. It would be many years before I could outmaneuver this particular danger.

I ran, hoping to outpace him and, if it was my imagination, hoping to get home more quickly. I failed in both of these. As soon as I began moving faster excited laughter echoed from behind me and I heard the flash of steps. He was on me before I could get even out of the alley's dimness. Large and tall, knocking me to the cobbled steps. I could barely see him, certainly I couldn't make out the details of his face. I could only feel his figure, slim for a grown man, but still large, bearing down on my, knees sharp and heavy on back. Then he reached around my and covered my mouth with a rag drenched in something foul. I tried to pull back, to not smell it. But my vision dimmed and I knew no more.

When I finally awoke, and I did awake, I felt as though I had been floating for years and years. It was an exaggeration of the feeling you get after a long nap, when you have not dreamed but you are left with an obscure sense of time having elapsed.

I did not awake tied to a bed, nor stripped of my belongings. I was more or less intact. I could take stock of my own injuries a few moments before the blackness that clung to my vision cleared. Scrapes on my hands and knees from being knocked to the pavement. Sharp and hot wetness on my left wrist, a cut, bleeding heavily. Pain in my head from the chloroform, at least I assumed the rag had been drenched in chloroform.

I could smell that I was outside, grass and manure and clean air. The countryside probably. I could feel scratchy drying grass poking me through my shirt and trousers. Finally my vision began to clear and I could see where I was. A chain was clamped onto my left wrist underneath a long clean cut. A few feet away the chain was attached to a pike that had been driven deep into the hard ground.

I was indeed in the grass and in the countryside. It was dark, but behind me faint illumination came from a little country house that was tucked back behind a large barn. I sat up, trying to listen beyond the stunted range of my vision in the blackness. As I did I tore a long strip from the bottom of my shirt, using it to bind my sliced wrist.

I had a list in my head already of what I needed to do. I was not foolish and I had spent most of my life under my own protection. I knew that sometimes girls were taken for dark deeds. It was not something I was cognizant of ever learning, but a fact of the world that was simply known. I had also understood that it may not be up to me to prevent it, that I, a thirteen year old girl, could be outsmarted and outmuscled and outmatched. So I had spent time deciding what I would do if I were ferried away in the night. I had prepared movements for my muscles even when my brain was keening with terror.

Wounds first: That I had done to the best of my ability. The blood was somewhat staunched and I could do no better at the moment. The next thing was harder: Figure out what was a threat.

Obviously the man who had attacked my in the alley, but where was he? For what purpose was a chained in a field outside a country house? It was possible that my original attacker had sold me to someone else, but that didn't explain my purpose here.

I got to my feet and walked to the pike driven into the ground and attached to my chain, that would have to come up. A glimmer of light made my head shoot up, dropping into a crouch on the grass. It came from the roof of the barn, glittering in the light from the house.

It took me a moment to align the things that I saw. Glimmering on a long metal shaft, an imperfection in the roof's straight lines. _A man._ A man lay on the roof on his belly, a rifle poking out in my direction.

I dropped flat to the grass, instinct telling me to take cover. But a moment later I reconsidered and slowly stood back on my feet. It made no sense to drag me all the way from the city streets, drugged and unconscious, so that he could chain me down then shoot me the moment I came to.

There was something else he needed me for.

It came to me in a rush of understanding, piecing together the clean cut and the chain and the rifle. I was _bait._ I turned to face the dark, face becoming flushed. Excitement tingled up my spine. Wishful thinking convinced me that it would be no ordinary wolf or bear that came out of the darkness. What sort of hunter was both committed enough to kidnap bait but incompetent enough to need it against something as paltry as an animal.

I knew it to the marrow in my bones. There was a monster in the dark. I had been ready and it had come. I unwrapped the covering on my sliced wrist and let the blood flow. Let it come. This was what I had wanted. I drew out my little knife from my boot, fingers tingling.

It felt as though I was waiting a long time, then, out of the darkness, low and deep, came a growl. That singing in my blood that I so loved came again, but with such intensity as I had never felt. I almost began to laugh.

And then I saw it, looming at me out of the dark, hulking and shaggy. A wolf, but larger than a wolf by four or five times, teeth enormous and glistening. The singing surged, lacing my blood with combat lust.

It was not bravery, which I had always counted as acting despite fear, but a vacancy of fear of any kind. Later I would know that failure to feel fear is as dangerous as a failure to feel pain. It does not mean one is not damaged, only prevents them from being adequately warned.

The adrenaline had sharpened my senses and I smelled the rank of its breath and heard the rasp of. And I only felt excitement, a rushing high that nearly made me cry out with the joy of it. It hunched its legs, ready to pounce but I moved first. Without meaning to I laughed into the dark, hooting as I sprinted at the beast.

I would not have made it all the way there if it had not launched itself toward me, my chain being too short. It attacked as dogs did, all bite, claws used for running and not slashing like a cat.

That maw came at me like lightning and snapped nearly at my hand, but I twisted away, leaping my chain like a jump rope and twisting to right myself. The wolf leapt again and I ducked down, scooting forward so that it landed over the top of me, its belly right above. I howled in exhilaration and stabbed upward.

It screeched and blood gushed from around the wound, coating my hand. The smell of it intoxicated me and drove me onward. The wolf lurched back, wrenching the knife from my bloodied grip.

I dance backward, away from it. It whined from the assault but was regrouping, circling me. The smell of blood had sent my heart pumping, ecstasy thrilling in my veins. "What's the use of that pretty rifle if you're not going to shoot!" I called up to my human kidnapper. I feld giddy. This was the thrill of a fight multiplied one thousandfold. I did not ever want this to end.

I ducked under the wolf once more and came up laughing, the wolf stumbled on my chain, nearly crashing to the ground, snarls being ripped from its throat.

A trilling british voice echoed merrily from the barn in lieu of gunfire, "But you're doing so unexpectedly well on your own! I would hate to miss the finale."

I didn't respond, I had come upon an idea. I rolled forward under the hulking thing and came up on the other side. I leapt astride it, my hands fisting in its coarse and dirty fur. I felt more fleet of foot than I had in my life, moving as if on castors.

I pulled on my chain. It tightened around the thing's throat as I'd hoped and I twisted my arm around it, pulling back with all my strength. My left arm, cut up the wrist, was half useless and I had to drag my full weight on the chain to give it enough pull. But the thing's next snarl was hampered. It thrashed and tried to roll, tangling itself up. Its body came down sideways and I hurriedly slipped from astride it to prevents its bulk from crushing me.

I dug my heels into the ground, pulling on the chain. The struggle seemed to go on for a millennia, but each ounce of strength that left the wolf seemed to flow directly into me. It sputtered and its legs gave out. I kept pulling.

The head of the beast lolled and I leapt to its front and pulled free my knife, still lodged in it's chest. I swung down with a wild cry, slicing through the monster's throat. Its blood spattered across my face and chest. It was warm and I loved the smell.

I collapsed against the corpse. The battle had left my almost entirely drained, excitement already leaking out of me. And I could go nowhere, my tactic having wrapped my chain so thoroughly around my adversary that I had no more room to maneuver. I sat back on the wolf.

It was not that I expected the shot to ring out and leave me dead with the wolf. I would have almost been satisfied with that, so exultant I was with my conquest. My body thrummed from my toes to the tips of my fingers. But already it was deadening. I felt no relief, only hunger, oh to do this again, to recapture that thrill.

I saw the man climb down from the roof, walking toward me. I could hear him laughing.

"Well done, my boy!" He said genially, rifle slung over his shoulder, "A truly unexpected display! Using the chain was something no one has thought of yet."

I could not help but grinning, my breath was ragged, but regardless of the danger my heart swelled with the praise. He was the one who had brought me here and for that I loved him in that moment, for allowing me that exquisite pleasure.

"It was a werewolf, right?" I asked.

"Not quite, my little hunter, but a Beast of Gévaudan, werewolves are but a thing of storybooks." He was now close enough to see in the light of the not quite full moon and the country house.

He was tall as I remembered and elegantly dressed, long blonde hair tied fashionably back. He stopped a few paces from me and swung his rifle back up to his shoulder, finger caressing the trigger, "I do apologize for the inconvenience. No hard feelings, my boy."

"Wait!" I said, still grinning, "Tell me first, are there more of them?"

He did not lower the gun, but he nor did he pull the trigger, "Not right at the moment, are you choosing now to become afraid? And here I thought you had a bit of pluck."

"No," I said, "I want to fight another."

Now, with another laugh, he let the rifle dip down, "Now that is not something one hears every day. And what is this, not a sprig of antipathy for being snatched off the street?"

I gave him an appraising look, "You needed bait right, to draw it out?"

He shrugged, "I did indeed, they are too cunning to fall into a trap unless you give them a good bit of encouragement."

I nodded and considered my next sentence, I didn't want to say it if it wasn't true. I thought of the contents of city streets and the excitement of this, "I would have done the same."

He laughed, "Would you have?" He approached me and tipped my head back by the chin to get a better look at my face, then tapped my on the nose with a finger, "Boy after my own heart."

"I'll do it for you."

"You'll do what for me?" His eyes twinkled.

"Bait monsters. I'll do it. Teach me to hunt them and I'll do it."

A wide grin etched over his face, "Why, my darling boy, what an offer! I am tempted to take you up on it. Do you have a name, lad?"

I answered with surety, as though I had answered that question with this answer a thousand times, "Lee Henry."

Something in that delighted him, "It seems Henry boys do have a knack for the heat of battle," he remarked.

I held fast to my assumed surname, but I rethought my first. If he was to teach me to hunt we would potentially be in close proximity. There was no way to hide that I was not the lad he had taken me for. I amended my statement, "Well, Annalee Henry."

He quirked his head to the side then laughed again into the night, "A girl in trousers with a knife in her boot asking to be taken on hunts! Do you know what, Annalee Henry, I do believe I will take you up on your offer." In a twinkling, his eyes darkened and he said with unflinching severity, "I will have you warned though, get in my way and I'll put a bullet between your pretty little eyes."

That seemed, to me, to be more than fair. I put out my hand to shake his, he took it, giving it a firm and businesslike shake.

Mockingly he said, "My girl, don't you want to know who you're in business with?"

"Oh, right," I said, startled that I had neglected such a basic question, "What's your name, then?"

He winked, "Doctor John Kearns."

 **AUTHOR'S NOTE: Please let me know what you thought!**


	2. Tutelage

**Chapter 2**

Dr. John Kearns sat across from me, legs splayed out casually before him in the stateroom as our train sped along to Germany. As it happened, the Beast of Gévaudan had been a distraction on the way to bigger game. He had said he was already late to his engagement in Cologne and I thought that this might be a strong reason why he had brought me with him. So pressed, he had little time to collect another bit of bait and I had so generously offered to go voluntarily.

I absentmindedly itched the wound on my arm. Back in the country house, under lamplight he had held me by the wrist and stitched the wound closed, offering me nothing to deaden the pain.

"I'll only show you this once, Lee," he had said with a smirk, "So best you pay attention."

I had watched avidly, trying, mostly in vain, to keep my arm from jerking in pain. But I had watched how he'd done it. He had used a curved needle and thick black floss. I had watched the stitches, how he tied it off. I took him at his word, he wouldn't do it for me again.

"Don't pick at that," he reprimanded absently, "You'll tear out the stitches."

I stopped touching it and, instead, asked him the question I had been thinking about since we got on the train, "So what's in Germany?"

Half of me expected equivocation and withheld information. But he answered swiftly, "A lindworm."

"What'sat?"

He smiled to himself, "I suppose I did agree to answer such questions, didn't I, my little charge. A lindworm is somewhat of a snakey dragon, no wings if that is what you're thinking of, and no fire breath," he turned his attention onto me and bared his teeth in a smile, "Quite venomous though."

"How d'you kill it?"

"Well you shoot it," he purred, then smiled, "But if you aren't so equipped you will want to put a knife right up the soft underside of its jaw. Give me that knife of yours, I'll show you."

I drew my little knife from my boot and flipped it, catching it by the blade so that I could hand it to him handle first. He took it and spun it in his fingers. It was so agile, I could not help but be impressed.

"This is a good little knife," he said, distracted from his lesson, "Wherever did you get it?"

"Took it off a gangster in New York," I said without hesitation. I knew that he would really shoot me whenever it suited him, but _my god_ I wanted to impress him.

He laughed, "A gangster in New York? My my, you have been around the block, haven't you?" He twirled the knife again, "And was our wolf its christening?"

"Huh?"

He clarified, "Has it tasted life blood before the wolf?"

Pink colored my cheeks and I looked down, kicking the floor of the compartment with the toe of my boot. My heart had picked up speed. I didn't think he cared to know about the kid I had shived in the street brawl. He hadn't even died. I understood he was asking about the others. My fingers clenched and released.

Kearns pressed the flat of my knife's tip under my chin and lifted it so that I would look at him, he looked interested and amused. In a low purr he asked, "Who?"

I swallowed, his eyes were icy, not wholly human. Somehow, I took comfort in them. "The gangster I took it off of," I said unsteadily, "He was the first." Up until that moment I had made myself forget about it. I usually tried very hard not to. I liked to think of the kid in the fight being the first, being the only. But that was not what had happened.

His voice was delicate, though his interest was obviously piqued and he had not lost the note of amusement. "The first?" He asked, "Not quite such a novice as I supposed, who else?"

I felt unable to lie, compelled to bare myself to him. For how could he who kidnaps children to bait monsters condemn me? I had never spoken it aloud. I rarely let it find words in my own mind. My voice broke as I said it, "My mother."

His smile was as near to warm as I had seen it, "Lee," he said with what sounded like affection, although I suspected it was less than genuine,"How very _precocious_ of you." Then he twisted the knife so it bit shallowly under my chin, "You'll do it here, on the lindworm, under its jaw, where it is softest."

He pushed the knife tip hard enough that my chin was tilted all the way up, exposing my entire throat. He let it linger there for a long moment, then he pulled it away and offered it back to me, handle first.

I took it and put it back in my boot.

He let a long silence sit in the stateroom then said, "If you live through the lindworm I'll teach you how to throw it."

I set my jaw and looked at him fiercely, "I'll live through the lindworm."

"Do you know, what, little hunter," he said, grinning, "I do believe that you will."

I kept close at his heels as we approached the Germanic castle that rose into the slate grey sky. This was the stuff of myth and legend, the kind of building I had thought of in the same breath as adventure when I had been a kid. It was smaller than some of the New York buildings but so much more grand, and horribly more frightening. I nearly expected us to be greeted by a knight.

We were not, the person who greeted us was less exciting. Of course, if a knight lived here they might not have needed to hire a man who used children as monster bait. When we were halfway up the stone steps the doors burst open, revealing a harassed looking man with a bushy black mustache that he had curled up at the ends. He exploded into noise, his deep voice booming in the harsh sounding German. I had only ever heard German in Dutchtown on the Lower East Side. With what I was usually doing when I was in Dutchtown, most of the German I knew could be translated to some variant, of ' _dirty gypsy rat_.' This knowledge of the language did me no good in keeping up with what a German who owned a castle was saying.

Suddenly shy I stepped behind Kearns, peeking around him. They conversed in German, the castles proprietor loud, angry and frightened, Kearns soft and jovial. After a few exchanges Kearns stepped to the side and put his hand on the back of my head in an imitation of affection, ruffling my hair. I heard him say 'Lee,' among his German, so I assumed I was being introduced.

The man was flustered so badly he could barely string words together, stuttering and stopping and gesturing wildly inside; Kearns was calm as a cucumber, smiling and laughing and occasionally looking down at me and giving me a wink. After a bit of back and forth we were taken inside where the mustachioed man pointed and would go no further.

Kearns chuckled and said, in English, to me, "It seems that she has gotten into the castle, Lee, she is barricaded in the upper floors! They do like castles, like to take them for themselves, eating their way into solitude."

I tagged along after him, nearly jogging to keep up with his quick pace, "How do you know it's a she?"

He gave me a hungry sort of look, "The females are bigger!"

He took me up a grand stair to an upper hallway. A quarter of the way down it had been barricaded with a motley assortment of furniture that stretched all the way to the ceiling.

"Is she back there?" I asked. It smelled up here, like blood and earth.

"Yes, they've put up this lovely barricade to keep her contained, only after she made off with four of the Count's daughters, of course."

Gruesome though it might have been, I laughed, "If we're going toe to toe with a dragon that carts of girls from castles, where's your shining armor?"

He grinned also, "It is a bit storybook, isn't it."

I put my hands behind my head and leaned my weight back on my heels, "So what's the plan?"

He gave me a stunning smile and tapped my nose with his finger, "I thought you'd scamper on through and draw her out with you sweet young flesh and I would shoot at her from the barricade."

I rubbed the back of my neck, of course, that was what I had signed up for, there was no use backing out now. "Don't shoot me."

He pouted playfully, "Don't you trust me?"

"No," I said briefly, then started toward the barricade, ignoring him laughing behind me. I thought to make a hole to go through near the top, so I wouldn't get crushed by furniture if it caved in. I climbed unsteadily up the pile of furniture, moving slowly to check the steadiness of each handhold. Sometimes things fell away under my fingers, an end table crashing down under the weight of my hand and the like.

At the top, ten feet up and the narrowest part of the barricade, I tried to shift the dining chair in front of me, wrenching it out and letting it cascade back.

Kearns was whistling at the bottom, spinning his knife, which was much bigger than mine, in his hands. I lost sight of him when I had to burrow into the barricade to get all the way through. It didn't take me long, it was thin up here.

When I could see through to the other side, and theoretically climb through, I scooted backward and called down to Kearns, "Alright, I can get through."

He beamed at me, "Excellent work, now just give me a moment and I'll come up to you." He sheathed his knife along his calf, slung his rifle over his shoulder and began the ascent, making it much faster than I did. But then, his limbs were nearly twice as long.

"So," he said, peering through the hole, "Why don't you just climb on through. I will follow after you and stay here. You've made me quite the vantage point."

I started to crawl through, bumping my knees sometimes on the protruding corners of tables. At the edge, looking down into the dark hall, I stopped and a single moment of panic rippled through me. I could be tucked into a dorm bed right now, head crammed full of Latin grammar, safe and snug. I could be penning a letter to my father, or to Will, begging them to write back. I took a slow breath. I _could_ be a whore on the street of New York City. What I could be didn't mean a damn thing. I was about to crawl into a dragon pit, I needed my attention here.

I twisted and looked back at Kearns' boyishly handsome face, grinning at me. I have no doubt, if I had not gone willingly, he would have just pushed me. My voice only shook a little when I spoke, "Under the chin, right?"

"Yes, sweetheart," he said with a wink, "Right where it's the softest, now go on."

I flipped myself around at the lip of the hole I had made so that I might climb down, rather than fall.

"Wait!" he hissed from behind me.

I turned back, "What?"

He lit a lamp and handed it through to me, "Can't be shooting in the dark, now, can we? Be careful not to let that go out now."

I took the lamp and slipped through the hole to the other side. As soon as my feet were back on the stone floor I righted myself and drew my little knife.

It was poorly lit, darkness was setting in outside and the lamp's light illuminated the area around me and I felt somewhat like a candle ready to attract a rather deadly moth.

I struck out, scooting farther and farther into the hall waiting every moment for it to leap out at me.

From up on the barricade Kearns said, quite merrily, "Keep your back to the wall or it will kill you from behind!"

I heeded his advice at once, shuffling back until I was pressed up on the wall. I didn't want to have to go too far. I wasn't sure how winding the blockaded area would get, nor how fast I would be able to get back to Kearns' rifle range if it attacked. I would have much prefered it come to me. That was what I was anyway, bait not explorer.

I hissed back up, "How long has it been trapped back here?"

"A week or so, I would guess, quite hungry, probably."

I knew that this thing, the lindworm, was something of a snake, and I knew in broad strokes, something about snakes. They tasted with their tongue and felt vibrations in the earth. I didn't want to cut myself open again if it could be avoided, so I went with vibrations. I laid the lamp down carefully and pulled a chair free of the barricade. I lifted it over my head and smashed it down on the ground.

It cracked against the stone with a resounding, echoing crash. Then I snatched the lamp up again and lifted it high, trying to peer into the dark. I felt as though I waited half of my life over. Seconds moved through sludge in the dark and I could count the pounding of my heart in my chest. But, finally, it did come.

Like with the wolf, I heard it before I saw it, a heavy slither along the stones. I tensed and put down the lamp, ready to leap aside. The barricade was at my back and I harbored a little sense of security that Kearns was poised to shoot above me.

It moved so fast I barely saw it before it was too close, launching itself out of the dark. It was long, so long that the tail end of it disappeared into the blackness and all I could see was the snakelike head coming at me, fangs poised. It would have done me in, I had no time to so much as roll out of its path, but a shot rang out and it stopped its initial assault.

The shot had clanged when it struck the beast's head, but had made no obvious wound. The head was armored, too armored for a gunshot. Its strike stopped on the impact but other than its slowly shaking head the gun had done nothing. Above me, Kearns swore.

' _Under the chin,'_ I thought to myself, ' _Where it's softest,'_

I had seen someone selling snakes before, they held them fast right behind the head. I thought of that, that there were no limbs to pluck me off, just that striking head.

I ran to the side while it was still reeling from the impact of the bullet and leapt atop its back trying to climb up toward its head, but slid back under the slick scales. I had just found a hand hold under a scale when a bullet ricocheted off them just beside my hand. I let go on instinct and it twisted, throwing me off so I flew pell mell over the ground. I rolled as soon as I impacted and heard its next attack connect with the stone where I had been laying. I didn't even have time to curse at Kearns for almost shooting me. I leapt up and launched myself at it's head, gripping with my whole body where I had seen the snake peddler hold with just his hand.

My blood was whistling with the fight, more even than it had against the wolf, I felt at my full ability then, unbefuddled by the residual effects of chloroform. Ecstasy shook my bones.

The first part of my plan went well. I was ahold of the head and something like secure. My fingers were under the sharp jut of its chin with my torso and limbs splayed over the top of its head. It could not strike me here. But the scales were slippery. I could not both grip the snake and stab it under the chin. Also, now faced with the sheer girth of the head I did not think my little knife would do much of anything. So, against my better judgement, I relied on my companion. I threw the weight of my body to the side, twisting the snake so its armored head faced the ground and the soft chin pointed up toward Kearns.

Laughter rang through the halls and he shouted, "Good girl!" Twin retorts of the rifle echoed in quick succession.

I felt them connect with the snake and, were it not for the armor that was just as hard to get through from one side as the other, I was sure it would have torn through the snake to me. As it was, I was mostly undamaged. Twice more he fired into the snake before the fight was over.

The snake collapsed on top of me, crushing me to the stone under its heavy weight. On the other side of its head, I could feel it's blood dripping onto my leg.

Absurdly, his praise had made my heart swell in my chest and I beamed at him up on the barricade. He, sunny and surprised, beamed back. He slid down with a grin, "What a clever girl you have turned out to be!"

He heaved the snake head off of me so I could scramble out from under it. I stood up, filled with energy and excitement. He ruffled my hair, "Good girl!" he said again, "I had rather expected you to slow me down somewhat and here you are making my job far easier than I could have ever anticipated."

"So you'll teach me to throw my knife?"

He laughed, "Oh I shall teach you far more than that if you're going to be this helpful."

I was rather atwitter with the compliments, and happily sheathed my knife. I took back up the lamp and scurried around the monster. I was still pulsing with adrenaline and I wanted to see how long it was. Fifty feet at least, curling and armored, more like a legless dragon that a snake. I ran back up the to head and sat down on front of it, carefully pushing it's mouth open.

"Whatever are you doing?" he asked, not unhappily.

I snatched the leg of the chair I had broken and propped open its mouth, holding up the lamp to look inside. "Well I guess you must have shot the brain to kill it so quick, yeah?"

"Yes, I'm sure."

"So I was seeing how deep you gotta get it before it goes down."

"Whatever for?" he asked curiously.

I was stuck though, I couldn't reach that far into the mouth without risking scratching myself on those fangs, "Do you mind if I hurt the body?"

"Do as you will, I am certainly not dragging it all the way back to England as a trophy."

I didn't hesitate, but sliced up the skin along the sides of the head, cracking back the lower jaw to see inside its mouth, "'Bout eight inches, foot long blade to really make sure you got it." Its blood, slippery and greenish black, was covering my hands now and I smiled up at him, "Bigger knife next time."

He laughed and winked at me, "You know, covered to your elbows in monster blood, you remind me of a friend of mine."

"Yeah?"

"Perhaps I will introduce you someday, I am sure he would disapprove of you."

I had a hard time imagining that he had _friends,_ but didn't say anything. I was much more concerned with the monster body in front of me. "You think the bodies of his daughters are still in there?" I asked, filled with the morbid curiosity of a child.

He laughed and indulged me, "Let's take a look, if you are so curious."

I scampered up and proceeded to it's belly, having to double back to fetch the lantern.

"Feel along its belly, Lee, yes like that. Try to find a bulge." He was laughing through his words, as though my hunting out the half digested bodies of the Count's children amused him.

I felt my hand down the snake's long belly, the scales were harder here than at the chin, I hoped I would be able to get through them. I ran my fingers over it a long way, passed where I thought the stomach would be.

"Gone a bit far, there," he said, following after me.

"No!" I said, "I feel something." Indeed, under my fingers was a pronounced bulge. I held my hand there and it squirmed beneath my fingers. I leapt back, knocking into Kearns, who put a hand on my shoulder to steady me.

"Oh, good girl!" he exclaimed and brought his hand up to the side of my head to pat me.

"What is it?" I said, looking up. My stomach had swooped at the praise and I could not help but smile at him.

He gave me a rather wolfish grin, "Unlike their rather less intimidating cousins, lindworms bear live young. Didn't I tell you this one was a female?"

"What do we do about it?" I asked. His hand was still on my head.

He tweaked my nose and crouched in front of the monster, "Well, my girl, we have a few options. We could let them die on their own, or cut them out and kill them. Or, we could catch them and keep them."

"For what?" I asked. I had a hard time imagining him as a man who kept pets, even monstrous ones.

"To sell them, obviously, they would go for quite a price. There are only a very few of these beasts left, you know, and even fewer breeding females."

I tried to imagine what my father would do to get his hands on living baby monsters, and rare ones at that, "I'll bet they would."

"So what do you think, Miss Henry?" He asked, smiling.

I crossed my arms, "What do they eat? I mean, could we keep them alive?"

He nodded approvingly of my line of questioning, "Rats ought to do, they prefer young human flesh, but will take a substitute while they are small."

"Are they venomous when they're born?"

He smiled again, "Indeed they are and sharp little teeth they have too."

"We'd need something to keep them in."

"I'm sure I could procure something from our good Count. Have you any other objections?"

Swiftly I asked, "Do I get a cut?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"When you sell them, do I get a cut?"

He laughed so hard he nearly fell over, "Why my pragmatic little huntress, yes, you shall have your cut. Twenty percent."

"Thirty."

His eyes glimmered at me playfully, "Twenty five."

"Deal." I said with a sharp nod of my head, "So go find us a container, huh? I don't know German."

"Then you work on getting that belly open, no here, use mine, it's a good deal sharper." He said, handing me the long knife he kept strapped to his calf. Then he climbed back up through the hole in the barricade.

I sat crosslegged in front of the bulging belly, the scales were hard and I didn't want to stab too hard through the skin and hurt the valuable babies. I touched the scales. They weren't quite like the little scales of a snake, harder and more individual, like armor.

If it were alive and thrashing around trying to kill me, it would be hard to get through it. As it was, I thought I had a plan. I tried wedging the knife's blade under one of the scales and prying it up. What I really wanted was to get the scales torn off and the skin ready to be sliced open by the time Kearns came back, so he might be happy and impressed with me. I had enough good sense to understand that he was only keeping me alive and with him because he thought I was useful. But what was the harm in that? I would simply have to keep being useful. At least that was a motivation that I could understand.

The scales were hard, but they came up with a little prying and when I tugged on them individually they came out, taking with them only a little skin. I made a neat little pile of them beside me, although the first one I had loosed I slipped into my pocket.

I heard Kearns clamber back through the barricade and return to my side. I looked up, with him he carried a large glass jar, "Ah, the scales came right off, did they? Good girl."

Pleasure burned in my stomach with his praise and I took the jar. He seemed only too happy to let me cut the venomous babies from their dead mother.

In this, too I was determine to make him pleased. I pressed the tip of the knife against the exposed skin.

"Not too deep, now," he said, "Don't damage them. There, like that. Slide the knife along and catch them in the jar when they come out. If they get away from you, jump back."

I did as he said, drawing the knife shallowly across the skin so it parted on either side.

The babies did not tumble out as I had envisioned. I bit my lip. Kearns offered no suggestions.

I thought that maybe the babies weren't just sitting under the skin, maybe there was something else keeping them where they were that I couldn't see. I had, at the time, only the vaguest sense of anatomy.

"Give me a minute," I said.

"Oh, take your time."

I pried off more scales, making a large, round gap in its armor. I mimicked my first cut, but sliced it perpendicular, then I took one of the four flapping corners I had made and peeled it carefully back, exposing the innards of the monster.

"Can you hold the lantern?" I asked.

Obligingly, he held the lantern up so I could see into the hole, although he was still far enough back that he had no danger of being bitten.

As I had predicted there was a semi-translucent membrane holding the wriggling babies. I let out a noise of excitement and retrieved the jar.

"Alright, Lee," Kearns said, his sudden excited tone led me to believe that he had not expected the babies to come out on the first cut. Now, he offered real instruction, "Now take the jar and hold it at a slant against that sac, lean it so you can fit the knife above and the cut will be in the middle of the jar's neck, no, silly child, keep you hand out of the jar, just the tip of the knife. Yes, just like that. Now, be careful, make a swift and shallow cut then pull your hand back. No, get up onto your feet first and crouch instead of sit, there's a good girl. Jump now, if they slip away from you."

I did as he instructed, working slow enough that he could reprimand me if I did it wrong. I poised his knife and cut a slit up the membrane as he had said. The babies, slimy and writhing, tumbled from the sac and slid into the jar in a wet slurp.

"Lid on, Lee, _now,_ " He commanded.

I snapped the lid down and secured it, the tiny newborns thrashing against the sides of their newest enclosure.

I looked up at Kearns, who gave me another sunny smile.

Two days later we had taken a train back to London. The baby lindworms had been transferred into a terrarium where they could be properly housed and fed. It had been my job to take care of them on the journey back, which mostly meant opening the top of the tank to drop rats in for them to devour. Now, their case, and the rest of his luggage, was on its way via valet to wherever it was that he lived.

"You're going to need to look a bit less bedraggled where we are going to sell our little critters," he said casually. He had had clean clothes to change into, I was wearing what I had for the last more than two weeks, since he had taken me off the street. Compared to his refined and polished appearance I must have looked horrible.

"You're taking me with you?" I asked, I had half expected him to forsake his promises and abandon me the second we were back.

"I thought you wanted to learn how to hunt monsters."

"I did- I mean, I do. I just thought-"

He smiled at me, "Did I not make you a promise?"

I narrowed my eyes skeptically, "Why really?"

His smile turned less sunny but far more natural, "You are easier to cart around than an unconscious whore. And I was becoming bored, you are somewhat of an entertainment."

"I have different clothes at my flat."

He stopped and looked at me, frowning appraisingly, "How did you pay for a flat yourself?"

I shrugged, "I did some boxing in the street, they gave me a good cut."

He chuckled, "And if I keep you so busy learning the trade that you don't have the time for such extracurriculars?"

I bit my lip, "I mean, I've gotta live somewhere."

He beamed, "You do indeed, Miss Henry. I have given this some thought on the trip back. You know, an old friend of mine recently found himself a little assistant apprentice, it seems to be going well for him. My home is large enough that you would not perpetually underfoot. We'll collect your things and you can come with me, but keep in mind -"

I cut him off with a grin, "If I get in your way you'll shoot me between the eyes?"

He lifted my chin and looked at me, the chipper exterior falling away and leaving only ice, "Or say something to anyone about what you might see of me."

"I won't say anything," I said, "But, I um-" I pulled away from him and rubbed my neck awkwardly, "I might have to go home in the summers."

He barked a laugh, "I thought you were a street urchin! Making money fighting in alleyways."

I shifted uncomfortably, "Right, well...I was supposed to be at school."

"School? Who sent you to school? I thought you stuck your pretty little knife through your mother's throat."

I ran my hand awkwardly through my hair, and shuffled my feet uncertainly. I did not like my mother's murder being talked about so cavalierly. It still lurked in the back alleys of my nightmares. I also did not want him to know to whom I belonged. Warthrop I didn't much care about, but I didn't want to let this man near Will. I answered him vaguely, "My father, I um...came into his care a couple of years after my mother….died. He's busy but well off so he sent me to school."

"And he expects you home in the summer?"

"Yeah," I said hesitantly, "Well, he bought me a return voyage so even he would probably notice if I didn't turn up." And Will would notice. If I didn't come back, would the doctor come looking? Would Will badger him until he did?

Kearns looked me over, his lion's eyes were narrowed and his brow furrowed. They crawled over my long fingered hands and sharp featured face, then he smiled and said, "I will play your game then, Miss Henry, but tell me, do you plan to return to my _tutelage_ when the new semester starts?"

I shrugged, "If you'll have me."

He indulged me with another smile, "I will make you no promises."

By that time we had made it back to my building and he followed me inside. I had hoped to scamper unseen up to my flat and gather up my things, but we were stopped immediately by the landlady who always seemed to know when I came or went.

" _Girl!"_ She hissed, "Girl, you been gone for a long time, you think it's my job to keep your mail!"

"I got mail?" I asked, mystified.

"Some damn school girl came and brought it! You think you pay me enough to have it laying around my table for that long!"

"No, sorry, don't worry, I'm leaving. Can I have my mail?"

Irately she went back into her room to fetch it. I had quite forgotten that I had given not a little of my pocket money to a girl in my dorm to bring me any mail that I might get. But missives from Will, for who else would be writing me? made me wish that Kearns was not with me.

She came shuffling back and shoved a letter into my hands. I wanted to just put it in my pocket and read it later, away from Kearns, but I could barely help peeking, at least, at the return address.

 _Dr. Pellinore Warthrop_

 _425 Harrington Lane_

 _New Jerusalem, MA_

 _United States of America_

It was written, of course, it Will's hand.

I shoved the letter into my pocket and turned my back on the landlady to Kearns. "It's just up the stairs."

He followed me to my flat and stood leaning against the wall as I packed up my things. It all fit back in my little suitcase.

Kearns was peering around my living space with a turned up nose, "A dirty sort of set up, isn't it?"

I shrugged, "Couldn't street fight my way into the Astor House."

He laughed a little, "Wrong city for that."

I laughed back, "Yeah, well I'm a New Yorker."

 _Annalee,_

 _I received report from your school that you are progressing with mediocrity at best. Surely a child of mine, regardless of her prior lack of schooling, can excel with more alacrity than you have thus far shown. I expect you to improve by the end of term._

 _Your father,_

 _Dr. Pellinore Warthrop_

A second sheet of paper was folded behind the first, to which I turned excitedly, hoping to find word from Will. I was not disappointed.

 _Anna,_

 _Thank you for the letter. I know what you mean, I miss you too. It was only the summer but the house feels empty without you. Just me and the doctor as it's always been. But I'm glad to hear you aren't hating school as much as you thought that you would. When you write back tell me all about your new friends._

 _Sorry if you worried, I am in once piece, well, mostly. I lost a finger, but don't worry, it's healing fine. I'll tell you about it when you get home for the summer. I didn't know if you would be coming back for summers but the doctor said that you would. He made a real fuss about it, paced around the library snarling that he wasn't just going to send you off without care for a decade and a half. I can't tell you how happy that makes me, Anna._

 _Speaking of the doctor, I don't want to seem too forward, but I thought you might understand and I need to speak it aloud to someone. I am so lonely sometimes, Anna. He can ignore me for days, then, when finally he remembers I am underfoot he shouts at me and dresses me down. I do not know if it is worse to be ignored or remembered. I know that I could leave, run away or something. But I have an unquenchable need to prove myself to him. I feel as though I am bound. The few moments when he tells me I have done well, or says, '_ Good boy, Will Henry'. _I live for them, Anna. I know this makes me sound like a needy child. Perhaps I am._

 _I hope my bluntness does not prevent you from writing back to me. It is only that I felt I had to express it and that you of anyone else on earth might understand. But I am sorry if I have made you uncomfortable. I hope that I have not._

 _Yours with affection,_

 _Will_

I had only taken the letters out to read after Kearns had left me in the room he was letting me use. He lived in a place not so much smaller than Harrington Lane, but much cleaner. It was a brick building crushed between two other similar buildings, in the English style. It was well decorated and tidy, but there was no life in it, no vitality. It was like no one had ever lived here and it had been set up to sell to a well to do family. Nothing but the scattered trophies of hunts and packed bookshelves spoke anything to Kearns' personality. Being there felt like curling up to sleep in a lion's mouth. To allow me there at all must have meant that he was truly ready to dispose of me at a whim.

But for the moment, I was securely locked in my own rooms and could draft a reply to Will without fear of being overseen. I had already written a letter to Pellinore, unloading the most vitriolic of New York foul mouth on him. When I had finished I'd read it over a few times, grinning to myself, then burnt it in the flame of my lantern. Thus finished, I began work on the only letter I had any intention of sending. For Will I tried to sound less of a gutter rat and more a young lady.

 _Will,_

 _Your letters are a light in the darkness, Will. But you lost a finger? I am glad, at least, that it was not your life. You are not allowed to die, Will, I mean it. No good hearted young man would leave me to suffer Dr. Warthrop alone, without you to soften the blow._

 _And don't worry, you haven't upset me, I do understand. It is a strange thrill, isn't it, to be told you are doing well? If you are a needy child then so am I. I miss you terribly, Will and am already counting the days until I see you this summer._

 _But Will, you were so honest with me. I have to be honest with you. I had it all planned, you know, I thought about it a long time. How I was going to tell you about my year without really telling you. But when I read your letter I couldn't. You were too free with your speech for me to hobble mine. I'll ask you not to tell the doctor, but I know the loyalty you have for him, I won't be angry if you do._

 _I sent the letter from the school that Pellinore got. I left school. I was too far behind, I couldn't make it. They would have kicked me out if I hadn't left on my own. Don't worry, I'm alright. I went back to boxing in the street for awhile, then I found my chance. I did it Will! I hunted monsters, two of them. A big wolf I can't remember the name of, it was French I think, I couldn't spell it if I tried, and a_ lindworm _which is like a big armored snake. I'll tell you everything when I get back. I found someone to teach me. I can't tell you who, I'm sorry. But know that I am fine, and in one piece, I have never had more fun. I feel it like a calling from the stuff of the world itself, Will, and I can't turn it aside. I want to see everything that lurks in the dark, to rip it open and look it in the face._

 _You can't write me here, but I'll include a place you can. If I take awhile to write back, I might be out of London. We went to France and Germany last time. I'll try to show patience waiting for your reply as well, I know you have as much of a choice about where you go as I do, less so, probably._

 _When I get back I promise we can share war stories and compare scars. Maybe it will ease your burden not the be the only apprentice monstrumologist, although I'm not sure the man I am working with would really be called a monstrumologist. I don't think he's too inclined to science._

 _We will be like two sides of the same coin, Will._

 _Yours with affection,_

 _Anna_

"Alright, Lee," Kearns said in my ear, "Feet apart, yes, like that. Alright, turn your shoulders, no, you're holding it wrong," he wrapped his arm around me to adjust my grip on the blade of my knife, "Now, when you throw, you will use your entire arm and twist your torso."

He stepped back and let me try. His own knife was already sticking out of the human shaped wooden cut out, not dead on but impressively close to his mark. I had watched him closely as he had thrown it and tried to mimic his motions. I twisted, as he had said, and threw the knife with all my might. It slid in my fingers, slicing them open and then slammed, butt first, into the dummy.

I swore and clutched my hand to my chest.

"Don't get blood on my carpet," he said, then, after a pause, "Can you still curl your fingers?"

I tested it, although it hurt when I moved them and they were bleeding more than I could contain, they curled. "Yeah."

"Then go clean yourself up. Next time you ought to _listen_ when I correct your grip."

I looked down at my hand, trying to see passed the blood, I uncurled my fingers and held them out somewhat, trying to hold my other hand under it to catch the falling blood, "Do I need to stitch them?"

He gave them a discerning look over, "No, just wrap them up, the cut is shallow, your knife is just very sharp."

I nodded, "Do you have proper bandage or…"

"Beneath the sink."

I retreated to the bathroom and awkwardly dug out the bandage, trying not to get blood all over everything, although it covered both of my hands. Being right handed it was difficult to get my right hand wrapped up using my left and in the end I had a tangled mess wrapped around my fingers more than clean bandage. However, unable to do any better, I sheepishly returned to the living room.

He raised an eyebrow at my shoddy workmanship, "The bandages are supposed to stop the bleeding, Miss Henry."

"Yeah well," I said defensively, "This was the best I could do."

"You are no good to me damaged," he said with a smile and took my hand, unwrapping the feeble attempt and applying the bandages properly. In this, as with the stitches, his hands moved with practiced expertise.

"Keep practicing," he said when he was finished, "It will be good for you to learn to endure a bit of pain."

"Why?" Although I had a hunch, I wanted to hear his reasoning.

He gave me that sunny smile, "So many things that creep in the night come for the smell of blood, soon enough you will be in a real fight harboring a few _nicks and cuts."_

I did keep practicing, although it hurt my hand to do it. I got better too, at least, after a few hours the blade almost never caught on my bandages as I released it, although I had not yet gotten the knack of getting the blade to hit my target first.

As evening fell outside, Kearns came back to the living room, he was entirely dressed now. He had a habit of wearing only trousers and his shirtsleeves at home, but now he had a vest and an elegant jacket. Under his chin was a fashionable cravat and he wore a sleek hat. All in all, he cut quite the figure.

"Clean yourself up, we sell the little lindworms today and I want you to look like you didn't come in off the street."

I left off the knife practice and returned to my room to clean up. I pulled on one of the pretty dresses I had gotten with Will and exchanged my boots for girl's shoes. This gave me a second's pause. Without my boots there was no place to put my knife, which I was unwilling to go without. I knew that women on the street kept them sometimes between their bosom, but I was not yet so endowed that the lump wouldn't be noticeable.

I settled for ripping up a pair of my more worse for wear underwear and tying my knife at the inside of my thigh. I wrapped it like a bandage, two layers underneath to keep it from cutting, then three layers over the blade. It would be awkward to draw, but it was better than ending up dead.

So dressed, I went back downstairs.

Kearns took one look at me and his lip curled, "What the hell is that?"

"What?" I asked defensively.

"Come here," he said with exasperation.

I approached him and he roughly turned me by the shoulder and started pulling at my hair, "Do you have hairpins, Miss Henry?"

"No," I said, "I tied it back sometimes with some string."

He cursed, "I will make do, I suppose."

It felt as though he was tugging at my hair for a long time before he was satisfied with his twisting creation, "Ah!" he said happily, "You are even rather pretty when you don't look so much like an urchin."

I looked at the mirror that hung on the wall and regarded my own appearance. I certainly looked nothing like I was used to. Food under Kearns' roof was plentiful and regular which had filled out the jagged edges of my cheeks. He had outfitted me with real soaps and lotions for when I bathed and insisted I trim and file my nails. All of that along with the dress, the little shoes, and the elegant hair and I looked like a proper young lady. Although I felt quite unlike myself, I did wish for a minute that Will were here to see it.

"Come now, we have work to do," he said, "I've had them moved to a travel case, collect it, Lee, it is in the foyer."

I found the case and followed him out the door and into a hansom cab. It was quite an elegant cab, luxuriously comfortable on the inside, the driver dressed sharply, the horse big and black.

I sat across from him in the cab and waited for him to give me more information.

He was looking out the window of the cab. I sat in silence, making sure the case didn't tip when we turned. Absently I itched at the knife through my skirt. It was by no means comfortable. He turned from the window and frowned at me. His gaze went from the lump made obvious in my skirt where it was pressed down by my hand and the little shoes on my feet.

"Lee?" he asked with not a little amusement, "Are you armed?"

I looked at him with incredulity, "Yeah, course I am."

He reached out across the cab, a narrow space, and patted my cheek, "Of course you are." He dropped his hand and said more briskly, "Allow me to do the negotiating, Lee."

It was then that we got to wherever we were going and I got out of the cab after him, carting the case, "D'you know if they'll even shell out the dough for 'em?" I asked.

He laughed, "I have done this before, Miss Henry, and do try to speak more befitting of that charming hair style."

I tried to alter my New Yorker's accent, sounding less like I'd roll someone on the street for a few dollars, "Do you know if they are even interested in buying them?"

He shook his head softly, "We will have to work on that. But yes, Miss Henry, we have corresponded, there is a buyer interested, we will not meet him. I suppose you have been introduced to the notion of a fence."

"Oh, yeah, sure, so they got a buyer lined up?"

"They do indeed," he smiled, "You just stand there and look like a pretty little lady until we are finished. But listen close, and," he added stopping to grin at me, "Be ready with that dagger of yours if anything goes awry."

I nodded and he led me to the door and knocked.

The door was opened at once by a slender boy in a slick outfit. He bowed, "Doctor Shelley," he said to Kearns demurely, "You are expected, and who is your companion, that she might be introduced." We stepped into the foyer and the door was closed behind us.

Kearns gave me a small smile and I took to mean 'keep up,' and said to the door boy, "This is my assistant, Miss Cora Perkins." He put a hand softly on my shoulder and said, "Unwrap the cargo, Cora darling."

I gave him a nod more subservient than I might have any other time, "Yes, Dr. Shelley, sir." I was trying to sound how Will did when he talked to Pellinore. I carefully peeled back the black wrappings on the case, revealing the writhing babies in their glass case. In the few weeks since we had cut them out they had more than doubled in size, nearly all twelve still lived.

The door boy held out his hand politely and said, "I can take that, Miss Perkins."

I drew the case back and answered as I thought a proper girl might, "Thank you, sir, but Dr. Shelley has instructed me to keep ahold of them until the-" I stumbled only here, looking for a more refined word for 'dealings,' I forged on, "-negotiations are complete."

The door boy nodded curtly and withdrew his offered hand. Kearns gave me a tiny approving nod and put his hand to the back of my head to gently lead me after the boy and into the house's parlor.

The door boy introduced us as we walked in, "Sir," he said sharply, "Dr. Edward Shelley and his assistant, Miss Cora Perkins."

There, in a wide old fashioned chair was a rotundly fat man dressed in fine clothes, his watch's golden chain stretching across his broad stomach from the buttons of his jacket to his breast pocket. He had a bushy brown mustache that made him look like a walrus and he did not get up when we entered, although he held his arms out in welcome.

"Oh yes, Edward, I have been expecting you, how are you, old chap? And look at you you've a fine young girl on your arm."

Kearns gave him a warm and pleasant smile, "My dear Robert, it has been some time, has it not?"

"Too long, Eddy!" he said with a wink, "Yes, yes, I know you are here for business, but, my old boy, you simply must tell me how you ever got yourself a slip of a girl for an assistant. It's those blue peepers you've got, isn't it." He turned to me and jovially said, "You've found yourself a good master in the good Doctor Shelley, Miss Perkins."

"Thank you, sir," I said softly. He seemed like the kind of man Kearns would use to sharpen his teeth on.

"Now, let's see what you have brought me, hold it up to the light girl, these old eyes aren't what they were."

I took a half step forward toward him but Kearns laid a hand swiftly on my shoulder, keeping me right at his side, nearly pressed against him. He spoke with a sharpness that had not been in his voice before, "They are as we discussed, Robert, ten of them have survived. Thirty pounds each," he said, "That is the price we agreed upon, three hundred for them all."

I knew enough about the comparison of pounds to dollars to balk at this number. That was more money than I had ever seen in all of my life put together.

"Bring the things a bit closer so I can get a good look at them," he said, and again I tried to step forward.

Kearns hand, still on my shoulder, tightened until it was painful. When he spoke, danger laced his words and I was glad I was at his side and not in the chair facing him, "Do you not trust me to deliver upon my word, Robert?"

Filled with sudden understanding I looked down at the floor between me and Fat Robert. Now that I looked for it I saw a thin line that cut laterally across the floor beams. It was a common trick at the time, put to most use in dirty pubs to shanghai wayward men into service on a ship. Trap doors hidden along the floor. Get them drunk and drop them down. Getting rid of my body would be cheaper than the exorbitant price Kearns was asking.

Now feeling ill at ease and jumpy and pressed myself against Kearns' side until I could fairly feel his warmth through his jacket. His hand shifted to my other shoulder, so his arm was wrapped over my back, pulling me against him. The more easy to keep me where he wanted me. I did not mind the proximity.

Kearns spoke again. He sounded now entirely like a man who might kidnap a girl from an alley to bait a man eating wolf. Absurdly, this gave me great comfort. "You will not appreciate the hassle of retracting business deals with me, Robert, give your boy the money and we will make the exchange."

Fat Robert huffed, ruffling his mustache, "All business today, are we, Eddy, right, well enough. Boy, come here, will you."

The boy stepped smartly to his master and was given the appropriate amount of money. They shared a significant look which made my muscles shake to life. He then crossed back to us and to deliver it. There was something in the way he moved that set off my nerves, a twitch of preparation. He lifted his hand with the money and I reached out to take it. He released it into my hand and took the case at the same time.

He was quicker than me, although I maintain that I would have kept up if I hadn't been in a heavy skirt. He slid the box backward toward his master and wrenched me by the wrist, pulling me away from Kearns and into his grasp. I was pressed up against his body and he poked the blade of a knife that had appeared in his hand against my throat.

Robert smiled warmly at Kearns, "Just run along now, Eddy, if you don't make a fuss we'll send your sweet Cora out right after you."

I didn't think Kearns would let me to be killed, that wouldn't get him his three hundred pounds any more than obediently leaving. I looked at him and he looked back, sharing the briefest of glances. I gave him the smallest possible of nods and he turned back to Robert, all smiles.

"Well, this is rather ungentlemanly of you, Robert, she is only a girl, after all."

I had thought to wait for some sort of signal from Kearns, but the boy who was perhaps fifteen forced my hand. He had my body pulled flush against his, one hand around my waist, the other at my throat. He must have had very little experience with the fairer sex because the rush he had gotten from the action and the press of my feminine frame was becoming more and more evident against my back. Revulsion and anger rose up under my skin and I moved before Kearns gave any sort of go ahead.

I lifted one hand and shoved back his hand holding the knife, at the same time slammed my foot back, hitting his knee squarely. He yelled and moved back in instinct against the pain and I twisted out of the knife's hold. Unimpeded by modestly, I lifted my skirt and tore the knife out of its makeshift sheath, baring it at the boy.

I leapt on him, clubbing him around the face with my free hand and slashing at his fingers with the other. He dropped the knife and I scooped it up, tossing it to Kearns as I launched myself across the room.

As I had practiced leaping over gaps between buildings, vaulting the trap door was easy enough. I caught hold of the heavy old chair where a startled Robert still sat and used it and his weight as a fulcrum to swing myself around behind him. I raised my knife and pressed it on his throat until I felt it cut in just hair.

Kearns had taken my place over the boy, pressing his boot down on his throat, twirling the boy's own knife in his dexterous fingers.

"Do you have our payment, my sweet Cora?" He asked, giving me an affectionate smile.

I nodded, "Yes, sir."

"Then let's be on our way, shall we, watch your step now."

I back away from Robert, walking wide around the trap door until my back ran into Kearns, brandishing my knife.

One of his hands still holding the boy's knife, he put the other on my shoulder and led me backward out of the room. He opened the main door behind him and turned, pushing me ahead of him. He kept his hand on my shoulder, rushing me up the street. He snatched my knife from my hand and, along with the boy's, slid it into the pocket of his jacket.

"Good show, Lee," he whispered as we made our escape up the street, "Now, you do have the money, yes?"

"Yeah," I said, "Told you I did."

"Keep it wherever you've put it until we are back at home." He kept us walking another block before hailing a new cab and bringing us back to his door. My adrenaline was draining away by the time we reached his door and I shook with its residual effects.

He did not say a word more until the door of his home was closed behind us, then he turned a bright smile upon me, "You, my darling girl, are showing yourself to be a lovely young assistant apprentice. Now, where is that money?"

I drew out the envelope full of notes with a grin. He held out his hand expectantly. I reached inside first and withdrew seventy five pounds of the three hundred, I handed him the rest. "My cut," I said in response to his raised eyebrow.

He laughed, "Well I daresay you have earned it."

"You and I Lee are going on a little adventure today," Kearns said on the morning of my fifth week in his house. I looked up at him from my breakfast and he tapped my nose with apparent affection, "Finish your eggs, poppet, you'll need your strength about you."

I didn't ask for clarification on this cryptic comment, but finished by breakfast and cleaned up after myself. He had seemed amused, thus far, to care for me. I could only hope that this amusement would last until he needed me again. Good sense dictated that I flee in the night, but the prospect of another thrill from a monster hunt kept me there. The desire to recapture the fire that had filled my blood with monsters closing in fettered me like a drunk to whiskey. For that I would gamble myself on Kearns' impulses.

"Trousers today," he said when he saw that I was finished with my meal, "And good sturdy boots."

So outfitted, I followed him into a hansom cab. I was surprised at the state of the cab. Unlike the one we had taken to the fence, this was something of the quality I was more used to, bedraggled and decrepit. The driver too looked much worse for wear. His clothing hung off his skeletally thin body and he smothered his face in his elbow every few minutes to seize in coughing fits.

But I didn't question Kearns, and sat quietly while the cab pulled away from the curb.

"Aren't you going to ask where we are going?" He said with a grin.

I shrugged and obliged, "Where are we going?"

"For a lesson in the countryside, it is high time you learn to shoot," he patted the canvas bag he had brought with him, "Come here, sit beside me."

I moved to the bench alongside him and he drew out a long rifle from the bag. It was not the first time I had seen it. It was the same rifle he had pointed at my chest in the backcountry of France.

"This, my girl, is an Enfield Model Rifle, in common use by the British Infantry." He took me over it carefully, explaining each mechanism. He touched the gun with loving caresses as he spoke.

This lesson, and the following one about his revolver took us all the way out of London and to his chosen spot for target practice. When the cab stopped he slipped the guns back into the bag, slung the bag over his shoulder and leapt from the cab.

"Come along, Lee Henry!" he said jovially, then he looked up at the cabby and said, "There will be something in it for you if you wait for us, my good man!"

The cabby agreed to this happily. And sat back on his cab while I followed Kearns out through a copse of trees and into a clearing. He set up a target and led me back as far as the clearing would allow.

"Rifle first," he said, "Now, watch me." He loaded the rifle slowly so that I could keep track of his movements, then lifted it to his shoulder, "Mark how I stand, Lee," he ordered, "Do you see how I'm holding it? Right in the crook of the shoulder, do you see?"

"Yeah, I see," I said.

He fired and hit the target dead on. Then he turned and handed the gun to me.

I took his place, standing with my feet wide apart and lifted the gun to my shoulder. It was heavy, heavier than I had expected it to be, and big for me. It sat awkwardly in my arms where, in his, it had looked like more of an extension of his own limbs than forged steel and wood.

As he had with the knife, he stood behind me and adjusted the way that I held it. I took more care with his adjustments this time, knowing that a foul up with a gun could do more than cut my fingers. I closed one eye and looked down the sights. He hit me on the back of the head in reprimand.

"Don't close your eye."

I opened my eye again and tried to aim. Unsure if I was doing it correctly, but without any more guidance from Kearns, I fired. I did not see immediately if I had hit what I had intended to. My body had been stiff with nerves and the recoil knocked me back. I lost my footing and fell, landing hard on my rear end in the grass.

Kearns took one look at my ruffled and surprised self, splay legged on the grass and started laughing. He laughed so hard he had to clutch his sides. Irately I scrambled to my feet, blush creeping across my face.

I looked up at the target hopefully, I thought that maybe even if I had made a fool of myself I would have at least hit the target somewhat. There in the center was the mark from Kearns' shot and no other. I had missed the target entirely.

He was calming down somewhat and said, "Go on, try again. Load it like I showed you."

I did as he bade and loaded the gun. This time I was more prepared for the recoil and did not fall, but I did not hit the target either.

"Put the rifle up again, Lee," he instructed, then wrenched it around in my hands somewhat until I was holding it more to his liking, "We are close enough that you should not have to correct your aim at all, try it once more."

I aimed carefully and did not move from where he had put my hands. This time, when I fired, I hit the target. Not dead on by any means, but nicked it along the side. He kept me shooting until the bullets were gone. All of them but one, which he slipped into his pocket with an unsettling wink.

The revolver came next, which was harder even still and by the end of the day I could barely get near the target. Kearns' however, seemed more amused by my failure than concerned.

On his command I packed the revolver back into the bag. I began unloading and repacking the rifle too, but he took it out of my hands.

"No no, leave this one out."

I frowned but didn't question him. He wasn't a man to be questioned, especially not when he had a gun in his hand.

He turned on his heel with a playful wink and headed back toward the cab. "I believe," he said with a grin over his shoulder at me, "after all the fun of learning to throw knives and shoot guns, it is high time for something a bit more...down to earth."

I let him get a few steps ahead of me. If he turned his gun on me I might be able to put a few trees between us, at least. But he had not kept the gun out for me. He stopped right at the edge of the copse of trees and put out a hand to stop me as well.

"Quiet now," he whispered, "Discretion is everything."

I bit down on my questions and watched him.

He checked the gun, uncocking it and peering at the loaded rounds, making sure they were in place properly. While he was doing this he said, still in his whisper, "You told me that you killed a New York gangster and your mother. That was true, yes?" A smile was lifting his lips somewhat.

Softly, not above his volume I said, "Yes."

His grin widened, "Tell me what you did with them?"

"You mean…" I stuttered to start, "You mean how I…"

"What did you do _after_. How did you get rid of the bodies."

"Oh," I was still not keen on this topic, but it was better than what I had done before or during. After, I supposed, I could tolerate. "Nothing. I ran away. Well, I took the cash they had on them and ran away."

He tsked with disappointment and my stomach clenched unhappily. He raised an eyebrow at me over his rifle, "You ought not leave those things just lying about. It's impolite, and you'll get yourself hanged." He lifted the rifle to his shoulder. I ducked back behind a tree.

He gave me a look of chilly amusement, "There's no need for skittishness, girl, why ever would I spend an entire afternoon teaching you to shoot if I were just going to kill you in the evening?"

Instead he turned and aimed the rifle out of the trees at the driver of the hansom cab, his stance was the same as it had been to shoot the target. He didn't even frown, there was nothing on his face, no emotion at all.

I would like to say that I tried to stop him, or called out to the driver so he might have at least had a chance to run or hide or savor his final moments upon the earth. But I did neither of those things. I stood silently behind the tree and watched John Kearns shoot our driver between the eyes. I did not even flinch.

For two years I had been trying to forget the way my mother's blood had smelled on my hands, how warm that gangster's life had been when he died at the end of my little knife. It hadn't been like stabbing that boy in the big fight when he had not even died. There was blood everywhere then. Not like my mother whose red red red blood had been on her favorite blue dress and on the carpet she had woven out of rags. I had tried for two years to warm up the patch of ice it had made in my gut where things that got too close disappeared. Where feelings got swallowed up and lost.

But Kearns kept bringing it up and I thought that if I kept thinking about it the ice would grow and expand until it filled me up. Absurdly, as I watched the already dead body of the cab driver collapse toward the earth, I thought of Will Henry. If I came back to Harrington Lane would he smell the new blood on me? If everything slipped away from me into that pit I could feel inside my gut would he see it? Would he still sign his letters, ' _with affection_?'

But that didn't change that I only bit the inside of my lip and looked at John Kearns after the body was dead on the ground. He looked back with a cavalier smile. After one becomes a murderer, does it matter how many more she kills? Is it a slope you slide gradually down or a rope that, once cut, no longer keeps you out of the abyss? The maw that lurked between my ribs widened.

Kearns swung the rifle off his shoulder and handed it to me, "Pack that up. When you are finished, you can tell me what we will do with that body."

Obediently I unloaded the gun, checked it as he had showed me and put it back in the canvas bag. I did all of this efficiently, not slowing down to give myself time to think. Even in this terrible thing I wanted him to approve of me.

"We could put him down a well," I said to his expectant face.

He folded his arms over his chest and leaned against a tree, "What are wells used for, Lee?"

I shrugged, "To get water, I guess."

"So, don't you think that someone will discover a rotting body sitting in their source of fresh water? Don't you think they might fish him out and alert the authorities?"

I flushed, I felt that I ought to have thought of that. There was residing inside of the cool faced girl being lectured on the logistics of murder, something under my skin that shook. But she was superceded by the need for John Kearns to think me clever and useful and quick.

"...bury him…" I said after a long pause, "In the trees. Can't imagine many people come back here."

He grinned, "Getting better, Lee."

For the most fleeting moment I tried to cast Pellinore Warthrop as the sort of father who would crash out of the underbrush and stand between me and Kearns. And I would have given everything in the world for the half a moment he might look down at me and ask me if I were alright before he berated me for allowing myself into this place. But he was in his dusty house in America, and he was preoccupied with his work, and after all, I had come here of my own volition. I shoved my hands in the pockets of my trousers so he would not see them shake.

I waited for him to keep going. I couldn't put together anything to say. How had he smelled me out in that alley. Was it coincidence that a scrawny kid had chanced upon his path when he needed a warm body? Or had he intuited that I was ' _a girl after his own heart,_?' How could I ask for a savior in a father when I had cut down my own mother?

Would Will smell the foulness coming off of me? I imagined a summer of Pellinore's indifference mimicked in sweet Will. Would it not be for the best? Could Will be safe within my reach? Perhaps that was why Pellinore sent me away, could he smell me out like Kearns, did he know the thing he had greeted in the night?

I stepped closer to Kearns, "We didn't bring a shovel, you're planning something else."

His grin broadened, "Clever girl."

My heart skipped.

"Come along now, Lee, there is work to be done."

We walked together out of the thicket and down the sloping grass to the cab. The horse was antsy but had not bolted with the gunshot. The man lay crumpled on the ground, a mass of blood and meat.

"Can you lift him?" He asked.

I tried, although I couldn't see how I would do it.

"No no, Lee, not like that. Put him across your shoulders, yes, now can you stand?"

I could not. Under the full weight of a dead man my skinny thirteen year old body was pulled back to the ground.

Kearns sighed and stripped off his jacket, handing it to me, saying "Do not dirty that."

I held the jacket as he lifted the man over both of his shoulders and carried him back up into the woods.

When we were there I spoke before I thought, "You could have called him up here before you shot him, he would have come."

Corpse over his back he smirked at me and winked, "That is thinking, Annalee! Make him do his own transporting. Now be a good girl and run along back to the cab and fetch my black bag, would you, Lee?"

I scurried off, back to the cab and hunted for his bag. It was under the seat, a top clasping leather bag, like a doctor's. I took it and dashed back up the hill. When I had found him again he had the driver laid out in the clearing where we had been shooting. The driver's coat and shirt were stripped off, Kearns' shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows.

"Did you bring the lantern, Lee?" He asked, "It is getting dark."

"No, you didn't ask me to."

He gave me a long suffering look, "I am asking you now."

I ran back to the cab and took the lantern from where it hung next to the driver's seat. I didn't have any matches and the lantern was unlit, but Kearns would be on his own if he expected me to keep matches in my coat without so much as a warning.

He did have matches, and lit the lantern as soon as I gave it to him. It was indeed becoming dark and the last few rays of the sun struggled to get through the tree cover. The lantern lit up a little circle, making the body look horribly pale, but in its flickering glow Kearns appeared almost golden.

He was on his knees beside the body and digging through his bag. He drew out, curiously, a scalpel and an ax. He looked up at me with a beaming smile and twinkling eyes, "Well, girl, are you ready for a lesson?"

I nodded, although I was not sure what I was really agreeing to. He had a bit of an overpowering quality that I was not yet, at only thirteen, able to overcome. That is a foolish notion that makes me sound as if I one day learned to prevent him getting the better of me. I have not. I feel as though I never will, even now.

"Come here then, kneel opposite me there, and take out your knife."

I did as he bade. There was a hole between the driver's eyes where the bullet had gone in. It both fascinated and horrified me.

He poised his scalpel. I thought he would slice open the chest but he did nothing so pedestrian. He made a small slit on the inside of the arm, blood came out of it. More than I expected. "The Axillary artery, Lee," he said, "You ought to know it if you will rely so heavily on a knife. Not that I disapprove of the choice." He seemed to be gauging my reaction as much as teaching me. He carried on, "Cut them here and they will die with no medical attention. Use your knife, find it on the opposite side."

Unexpectedly, I felt a thrill in my stomach, "I could drop somebody just like that?"

His eyes sparkled, "You could, Lee, if you were capable of finding the appropriate place to cut. Although it would take about four minutes, which can be quite a lot in the moment of battle."

I turned the body's other arm and tried to find the spot that he had cut on the left side. The longer I kneeled here the less the driver felt like he had ever been a person. I set my knife tip against the body's skin, "Here?"

He lifted the lantern to get a better look, "A bit lower, yes, right there. Push in now, harder than that."

My knife sliced through the cooling skin and made a mark identical to his, brief drool of blood as well.

He laughed with delight, "Good girl!"

I flushed in happiness at having gratified him and asked, "It'd bleed more, right?"

"If his heart were still beating? Yes, and it would spurt. You ought to watch out for that if you have to return through the streets. It does not do to be out and about covered in blood."

I nodded to show him that I understood. He continued like this, showing me the weakest parts of the human body. He removed the man's trousers and slit a thin line on the inside of his thigh. He demonstrated the cutting of a tendon in the ankle and in the knee.

"If ever you need them alive, but none too fast," he said.

These things he also had me mimic. Cutting through the tendon, feeling it snap back, gave me a rush, felt wholesome and powerful. And ended in such praise I nearly flushed. I was, it seemed, designed for dark deeds such as this.

What would Will think of me, taking instruction on how to hamstring a man?

As he showed me how to run a knife across the throat most cleanly, I stifled a yawn. He clapped his hands together, "It seems we have run a bit late," he said, "You must be quite exhausted, and we still have much to do. Never fear, Lee, we will clean up and be off to home and bed."

The domestic kindness of his words clashed with the bloody fingers and scarlet scalpel.

"S'this when you teach me to hide a body?" I asked. It was almost easy after an entire evening. Far easier than I would have thought. Of course, this was not my first of this particular kind of show.

"After a fashion," he said, "You must always think of where you are, Lee. Tell me about it, about this little copse."

I frowned and reached to run my hands through my hair. His hand flashed out and seized my wrist, arresting the movement, "No no, Lee," he reprimanded, "You have a dead man's blood all over your hands and hair washes more poorly. Touch as little as you can. Certainly don't touch your clothes or mine. Remember we did not bring a change."

I lowered my hands and answered his first question uncertainly, "Well it's out of the city, I guess, don't suppose many people get up here."

He grinned, "Aha!" he exclaimed happily, "You hit it on the nose, no one comes up here. That will determine how we get rid of our dear driver."

I nodded and waited for him to continue, he did. "However, this place _is_ frequented by many a wild animal, scavengers in particular, how will this help us?"

I answered slowly, "Well they'll eat the body won't they?"

"Just so, my girl," he said, "We must simply make it look a little less like a person, in case someone happens upon him before he is entirely taken care of. First, pack his clothes up and put them in my case, we will burn them at home."

I did so, wrapping up the driver's dingy clothing and stuffing them into his bag. Off handedly he also handed me the scalpel, which I cleaned off and packed up as well.

"Now, Lee, let us assume that there will be no doctors rummaging through these woods, if all the meat were stripped off, what do you think would alert a common wastrel that this was more than a dead dog?"

I shrugged and tried to think of what I thought of as most particularly human, "The hands?"

He gave an equivocating little shrug, "Feel his hands, Lee, tell me what you feel."

I did, pressing against them, I didn't know what I was supposed to be feeling.

When I did not answer he elaborated, "The hands are just little bones, they will scatter and look like nothing to worry over. What else?"

With the excitement of feeling I knew then answer I said, "The head? The skull I mean."

He gave me a little nod and knelt again at the body, this time at the head. He ran a finger across the forehead, "The frontal bone," along the cheeks, "Maxilla," over the jaw, "Mandible. They give it up as a human. We ought to break them so they might be scattered."

I knelt next to him touching the face as his fingers disappeared from it, whispering the foreign words under my breath. With a rather soft smile he corrected me until I got it right. I looked up at him, his face was close, "How do we break them?"

A different person might have not followed him across the line that separated the hunting of a monster and the slaughtering of a man. But I had only discovered monsters last summer, I had felt the threat of men my entire life. Learning to kill them interested me quite as much as hunting beasts.

"A swift downward kick is the prefered method."

I knew the kind he meant, I'd seen ribs crushed just that way. I stood over the head, "Now?"

"As you like."

I put all my weight into slamming my foot down on the body's face. I made a direct hit and broke the nose, but the jaw and cheeks remained in tact, he still looked very much like a man.

I reeled back to try one more time but Kearns put a hand on my shoulder, "You are too small yet, I think, to do it properly. For now, I believe, you will have to be content with a demonstration."

I stepped back and he took my place. His foot came down swift and hard, but I was caught watching his face. As he crushed the bones under his foot his expressions slipped once more from his face. It looked as though a mask were falling away to show the ice beneath. It gave me a curious feeling in the pit of my stomach. He was boyishly handsome and fair while I was dark and angular, but there was an aspect to his chilly and empty face that felt peculiarly like looking upon myself.

The bones crushed satisfactorily under his boot and his mask slid back on in the form of a broad smile, "One day you will be big enough, Lee, fret not." He showed a moment's imitation of concern, "Didn't turn your ankle in the attempt, did you, sweetheart?"

"No, I'm alright."

He patted my face, rubbing a thumb affectionately over my cheek, "Aren't you just."

I leaned into the touch, affection starved as I was, and he laughed, "Here I am, forgetting my own instructions, I've left blood on your face. We will have to clean you up before we return to town."

I imagined then, what I must look like, leaning toward John Kearns next to a broken body of a murdered man, him smiling down at me, me hungry for his praise with his bloody hand print across my face.

"Now, Lee," he said in a soft voice, "Be a darling and fetch that ax."

I got it for him and he took it by the handle, "We will scatter him somewhat, to make it an easier job for scavengers. The trick is to strike just at the joints, watch now."

He twisted his body, bringing the ax down at the juncture of the shoulder and arm. It took him three hits to sever it. I did not flinch, not even when the gorey arm split away from the body, nor when he handed me the bloody ax to work on the opposite side, too desperate for his approval to remember that I was doing this to what was once a man.

I tried to hit where he had, right at the joint, but my aim was poorer than his and I cracked first into the collar bone, digging deep. The blade bit into the bone and, though I tugged, I could not free it.

He tapped my hands away and wrenched the ax free causing a mighty crack of the bone, "Try once more."

I took it back and tried again, this time I hit where I ought to, although not nearly as deeply as he had. It took me many strikes to get through it, and sweat was glistening on my forehead by the time I had messily imitated his work.

He relieved me of the axe and began the same job at the leg, removing it from the torso. My body remained still but my mind momentarily reeled. Did one recover from being a person to take calm instruction on chopping a body apart? Although it was not his fault, I thought of Pellinore and his attempt to keep my in tact by sending me away from his side. Whatever he and Will did in the basement during those necropsies could not have been this. The school he had sent me to had been costly. I wondered if he had ever spent so exorbitantly to send a monster away from him.

Kearns finished with his task and gave the ax back to me, "This one will be harder, Lee, be quick now, we must be getting back before dawn."

I set to with a fury, using all of my little strength to drive the ax blade between the leg and the torso. My breath came hard through my body and my arms burned. Blisters would be on my hands soon. It took me so long. The bones would not come apart. I heaved and struck once more. My limbs left heavy. Kearns took no pity on me and watched in silence as I labored over it. Finally, finally, finally, my ax struck through the last strip of skin beneath and thudded into the damp earth under it.

Kearns took the ax from my shaking hands, "I will do the rest, there is a canteen of water in my bag, clean yourself up, leave some for me."

I washed the blood from my hands and arms, being careful to leave more than half left for him. He removed also the crushed head and cut the legs again at the knee. Then he scattered the pieces into the brush, slicing them open to entice wildlife.

"Give me that water," he said, coming back. I gave it to him and he washed off his hands and arms, he looked at me, now clean and smiled, then frowned, "Ah, silly girl, you have forgotten the blood that got onto your face."

I had, it had felt sticky and terrible, but with the exertion I had entirely forgotten it was there. He poured water onto a rag and began to wipe my face clean. However, he did not do this without comment, "The look suits you, Miss Henry."

Cleaned up, only the dirt on our knees showing any wear, he motioned for me to carry his bag and he himself picked up the lantern, leading me back to the cab.

Through a yawn, I said, "What will we do with the cab and the horse?"

He shrugged, "Leave it in a bad part of the city, in what you know of poverty, will someone likely call the authorities?"

"Nah," I said tiredly, "Somebody'll just get a new cab."

"Quite right you are. No, sit up front with me, I will teach you to drive one."

I watched what he did to drive it, turning the horse around and beginning our journey back up the path and toward the city. It was very late when we were finally getting back and I struggled to keep my eyes open. I drooped then straightened myself, jerking back into wakefulness. I managed to overcome the fall toward unconsciousness three times before I succumbed.

I woke with a jolt when the road switched from the dirt path of the countryside back to London's cobblestone. I was leaning against Kearns' shoulder, his jacket was around my shoulders and he was back in just his shirtsleeves. I sat up, rubbing my eyes. He didn't say anything, but drove us close to where I had lived before. We abandoned the cab in an alley and took our leave. Me still wearing his jacket like a cape, holding his bag.

It was near to dawn by then and no other cabs were on the street, leaving us to the long walk back to his home. He was humming as we walked, but I could barely drag my feet fast enough to keep up with him.

The sun was coming up by the time we reached his door, and I was near collapsing. I heaved myself inside wavering slightly on the threshold. He locked the door behind us and relieved me of the jacket and bag, "You did better than I expected, Lee," he said with a grin, "You might prove a worthwhile," he paused there to grin, " _assistant apprentice."_

The term seemed to amuse him and he laughed privately to himself, "Get off to bed now. You've had quite the night."

I began my way up the stairs but turned back and asked a question that was long overdue, "What do you want me to call you? I'm not calling you 'sir.'"

He gave me a shining smile, "Jack will do, Lee."

I offered him a tired half smile, "Night, Jack."

"Goodnight, Lee Henry."

 **Author Note: Thanks for reading. I hope that you are enjoying it so far. Please leave a review and let me know what you think.**


	3. Miss Warthrop

**Chapter 3: Miss Warthrop**

 _Annalee,_

 _I have come to a final decision regarding your care over the summer months. You will be returning here to New Jerusalem until next September. Your boarding pass you have in possession already. I will not have time to meet you at the docks in New York, but I will send Will Henry as your escort. He will accompany you from the New York docks to the train back to New Jerusalem. I anticipate a missive from your school concerning your performance to proceed your arrival. I expect your mediocre at best achievements to have improved since the half term._

 _Your father,_

 _Dr. Pellinore Warthrop_

 _Anna,_

 _I didn't tell the doctor. If you ask me to keep a secret for you, Anna, I will keep it. But be careful. Don't be angry at me for saying so, but sometimes you sound like your father. What you said in your last letter, about wanting to look the stuff of the world in the face. It was what convinced me not to try to dissuade you from looking for monsters. Warthrop has said almost the same thing. I just want you to look after yourself. You said you can't tell me who you found to teach you, but Anna, you should. I might know them, or could find out about them from the doctor, monstrumologists are a close knit group, I'm sure they have at least been introduced. I only say this because there are dangerous people in this field, Anna. I know you can take care of yourself, I have been to New York, I know what sort of steel it must have taken to get along there on your own. I don't want you thinking that I regard you as fragile. But let me be worried over you, it is only fair, you worry over me._

 _I looked up lindworms, Anna. You fought one of_ those _. Their venom turns blood into sludge! They eat people whole. Forgive me, I am only afraid that whoever is taking you with them is using you. I have met a man in this field who would use a living person as bait. I could not bear it if you came to any harm._

 _But I'm sure you're tired of my warnings. Let me tell you about Harrington Lane. Warthrop has been his usual self, as I write this, and why I have time to write this, he is lost in a melancholic stupor. He's been in his room for days, he barely takes any meals, he is unshaven and foul. I hear him in the night, pacing across his room and muttering or shouting. He penned that letter, the one mailed with this one, threw it at me to copy out and then devolved into the mess that he has become. He has mentioned more than once that you must be quite busy with your studies if you cannot even write to him. He said vehemently that as valuable as his time was he would read your missives and send replies. Anna, I know that he was not kind to you, but write to him, please, Anna, as a favor if not for him then for me. I think that it would put him in a better mood and you can imagine how much more pleasant my life is when he is in a better mood. I know that he is difficult and can be cold and cruel, but he is a good man._

 _I will leave off there, talking about the doctor, I would like to tell you something of myself. I know that the doctor has already told you that I will be coming to fetch you from the boat, but I have something more to tell. I decided, if you can keep secrets from the doctor (and the devil knows he keeps secrets from me) I could have my own turn. If he were less distracted he would have noticed and I can only hope that my ruse hold up until we see each other at the end of May. It is not much of a lie, I have only told him that your ship is to arrive on the third of June when it is scheduled to come in on May 29th. The only train available will be leaving New Jerusalem on May 28th, so do not worry, I will be there to meet you. I thought that we might explore the city together. I know it is where you grew up, I thought that you could show off your hometown to me. I also thought that time with you and away from the doctor would be welcomed. I hope that isn't too brazen on my part. Since you are not supposed to be there we will have to share a hotel room, of course I will show you every courtesy. It is only that if we are both going to be hunting monsters, I think that we ought to enjoy time we can spend together, the lifespan in this profession is not particularly long. But please, Anna, tell me if you will harbor any sort of discomfort with these arrangements, I will, of course, not hold it against you._

 _I await seeing you on bated breath._

 _With affection,_

 _Will_

 _p.s. If you don't recognize me on the docks (I am a good deal taller than I was) I will be the boy with four fingers._

 _Father,_

 _Don't worry if you're too busy to write back, I'll understand. School is alright, I know you aren't happy with my marks but for Christ's sake it's not like I have any background in any of this. I'm working my hardest though to do as well as I can, if you want to blame anybody for my lack of academic success why don't you pen a letter to the New York City school system._

 _But if it means so much to you, I'll try to get my marks up at least a little by the end of term and figure out what the hell a Latin dative is._

 _In case you're worried about me wallowing away in loneliness, I'm fine. I'm alright at making friends. There's this boy, Jack, that I met from the boy's school. We get on alright. I don't know if I'd call him a friend, but he had my back against this big dog that came up on us. But I guess I won't waste you time with stories of schoolyard tussles. And I know, spend less time fighting dogs with boys and more time studying Latin grammar._

 _Your mediocre at best daughter,_

 _Annalee_

 _p.s. For Christ's sake, stop signing your name Dr. Pellinore Warthrop, we aren't colleagues._

 _Will,_

 _If the doctor figures out you pulled one over him, don't you dare tell him you followed my lead to do it, he'd never let me near you again. That said, I'm glad that you did it. There were three days between when I got your letter and when I had a chance to write you back. I've barely been able to keep a smile off my face. The man I'm working with keeps teasing me about it._

 _I can't wait to be in New York with you, Will. And don't worry about it, you aren't being too brazen, I can't imagine you doing anything untoward, close accommodations or not. I know you said you've been to New York before but if you went with Warthrop I bet you hardly saw anything worth seeing. Don't worry, I'll take you to the best spot in the whole city, you'll love it. You aren't the only one waiting on baited breath for it._

 _I wrote a letter to Pellinore, but I want it known that I only did it because you asked me to. I suppose if you can tolerate his company he can't be foul all the way to the core. And, since we've established honesty between each other, I suppose it would mean something to me if he wrote me back. Tense as our relationship might be, he is my father._

 _Speaking of my father, did you mean it, when you said that I was like him? I'm not upset over it, Will, if I say it frankly I was a little touched. I guess it's only human nature to want to be able to see something of your parents in yourself. Still, I hope you meant the part that makes you follow him around so loyally and not the part that makes me want to slug him one in the jaw._

 _But really, that is enough ink spent over Pellinore Warthrop. Have you really grown so much taller that I might not recognize you? Bet you've gotten handsomer too, haven't you. I think I'll recognize you before I ever see your four fingered hand by looking for the most strapping young man on the pier. I haven't changed so much as that, at least, not on the outside. But I've gotten pretty good at throwing knives, I'll show you when we see each other. You'll have to be careful though, I sliced up my hand pretty good the first time I tried it, I've got the scars to prove it. I'll show you those too, when we see each other._

 _Counting the days until May 29th._

 _With as much affection as ever,_

 _Your Anna_

"Lee?" Jack asked, his brow furrowing as he looked passed me to the weapons' case that stood behind his desk in his study.

He had allowed me to curl up in the cozy chair that sat next to a lamp in the corner to read the books he thought that anyone who ever hoped to be interested ought to read. These weren't dense papers on the scientific theories of things over my head either, it was Jules Verne novels mostly. I had never so much enjoyed reading, although, truth be told I still did not have much of a head for it and only got through them as fast as I did because it made him so pleased.

I looked up from his book I had tucked against me and replied, "What?"

He had opened the case and was running his finger down the blades of knives and the barrels of guns, "Did you clean these?"

I shrugged, "Yeah, thought I'd make myself useful."

He laughed and gave me an incredibly broad smile, "They have never looked so radiant," he took a rifle off the shelf and began and thorough investigation of it, "I do not need to show you something more than once, do I?" He gave me a jovial wink.

I blushed under his praise. Although he probably knew just what he was doing, he had guaranteed that nothing in his weapons' case would ever harbor another speck of dust.

"How are you liking Verne?"

I grinned, "It's good, lot's of adventure, but I don't know if I'd like being in an underwater ship for that long."

He laughed. His hair was unbound as it often was when we were at home, and he wore nothing but his shirtsleeves and trousers over stockings. He leaned against his desk. When he didn't say anything else I turned back to my novel

"I've come to a decision about you, Lee," he said as soon as I was immersed in the story again.

I looked up, "Oh yeah? 'Bout what?"

"About the continuation of our deal after your sweet family summer."

"And?"

"I'll be in New York City on October 17th, to take a ship to Columbia for a hunt. I won't wait for you, but if you're there, I'll pay your passage."

"Yeah, I'll be there," I said, "What's the hunt?"

His eyes twinkled, "Oh, there are been whispers of a Mohan hiding in the forests there. I have always intended to try my hand with one, and you provide just the right incentive."

"Incentive for you or for the Mo- what'd you call it?"

"Mohan," he repeated, slower, "And why ever can't it be both?"

"So I'm bait again?"

He shrugged, "That was the deal, Miss Henry, and how well have I held up my end?"

"No, I'll go, I just want to know what I'm getting myself into."

He gave me a feral grin, "You do have all summer to figure it out, what sort of tutor would I be if I just told you everything you needed to know?"

"October 17th?"

"October 17th," he confirmed.

"Where d'you want me to meet you?"

"The ship is called _The Explorer_ , it will leave the twenty third dock at three o'clock in the afternoon. Be there if you would like to continue our companionship."

"What'll you do if I don't turn up?"

He shrugged unconcernedly, "It isn't as though Columbia won't have girls I can use instead of you. I will simply have to put up with having an unconscious girl carted around the Columbian forests. I do so appreciate that you are willing to accommodate your own transportation."

"You wanna write that down for me?"

He obliged, writing the docking information down in his looping script and handing it over to me, "Don't be late."

"Why're you leaving from America anyway?" I asked.

He answered with a sunny smile, "Oh, I have something to pick up from an old friend of mine across the pond." He ran a hand through his blonde hair and said, "When is it that you leave?"

"Next Monday, s'that all right?"

"Yes, yes," he said waving a dismissive hand, "I had only thought to escort you."

"Why?"

He gave me a condescending look, "There is great cost in having a box filled with an unconscious wretch transported through wilderness, Lee. That is not to mention that I must find some way to keep her fed while she awaits use. It would require finding a guide and transportation that would not mind using a witless young girl as bait, for there would be no way to feed her unseen. Besides, I had not realized how particularly helpful it was to use bait that had a little spine. You save me great trouble and you are of less than no use to me if you are knifed in the street on your way to the London docks. I trust someone is meeting you on the other side?"

"Aw, m'I blushing? That was sweet, Jack."

He winked at me again, "Sweetness is what I am best known for."

The next Monday, dressed in a fashionable dress, with a parasol over my arm like a proper lady, I walked arm in arm with Jack toward the London docks. I had made sure to have the instructions from my boarding pass memorized before I had left my bedroom. The paperwork said "Pellinore Warthrop" very clearly on it and I didn't want Jack seeing it over my shoulder.

He was dressed in his usual elegance and we made quite the pair walking down the London streets. As much as I had objected, I was glad he was escorting me. It was hard to do anything alone when I was forced to wear girl's clothing. Under his other arm Jack carried box. I had asked about its contents but he had refused me with a tantalizing smile.

We reached the docks, the nice docks, not the scrappy workers docks. These were filled with passengers that looked more or less like Jack and myself, either scurrying onto ships themselves or seeing people off.

We stopped in sight of my ship and he released my arm, "I shall see you on October the seventeenth, Miss Henry."

"Thanks for the escort, Jack," I said, "See you in New York."

"Oh, before you run off, I have a gift for you."

"What? You do?"

He produced the box from his side with a smile, "I think it will be quite as useful for me if you have these as it undoubtedly will be for you."

I took the box and removed the lid. Inside were a new pair of leather boots, far nicer than the ones I had been using, and a little bigger, mine had been getting too small. He reached into the box and turned the right one up. Along the inside of the boot was a leather sheath built right in. Tucked into that sheath was an ivory handle.

I drew out the knife and looked at it with delight. It was longer than my old knife, with a better handle and less rust. The blade gleamed sharply in the sun and the ivory was cool on my skin. On the metal of the blade, right under the hilt where it wasn't sharp there was engraved, 'L.H.'

I swore under my breath, Jack laughed and said, "So you like them?"

"Yeah," I muttered, "Thanks, Jack."

He did not ruffle the hair he had spent thirty minutes fixing, but patted the side of my face, "A worthwhile investment."

"See you stateside," I said and mimicked his cavalier wink at him.

His eyes twinkled at that and he bent to kiss my fingers, "Enjoy your summer Miss Henry."

I peered anxiously around the pier, trying to find Will among the milieu. I had taken particular effort to make myself presentable before I had disembarked. I hadn't been able to make my hair as pretty as when Jack tugged and fussed it into place, but it was reasonably well done. My heart was twittering in my chest in anticipation of being reunited with Will. Regardless of how little actual time we had spent in each other's company, he was the closest friend I had ever had.

When I saw him my spine shuddered and my heart felt as though it were thudding to a stop. For it was not Will who stood on the pier waiting for me, with his big earnest smile and cowlicked hair. Tall, brooding, and unwelcome was Doctor Pellinore Warthrop hands clasped behind his back and looking unhappy.

Irate that I had spent any time at all on my hair only to be greeted by Warthrop, I approached him, fingers twisting over my suitcase handle. Only now did I realize how incriminating the contents of my bag was. New boots with a built in knife, seventy five pounds, and, worst of all, a scale stripped off a lindworm.

He looked down at me as soon as I approached him. His eyes looked wild, lit somehow by their own flame. His jaw was clenched and his long fingered hands curled and uncurled. If he had looked at me like that in Harrington Lane I would have cowered, but on the streets of New York that smelled like home I had more spine.

"Thought you were sending Will."

"Will Henry did not prove himself up to the task."

"Well…" I said, I felt like I should offer some sort of greeting, but I wasn't sure where we stood. I rubbed the back of my neck awkwardly.

He looked down at me equally as awkwardly, "Our train leaves shortly, we ought to go."

"Sure," I said, and followed him down the pier toward a hansom cab that waited for us. Belatedly, he turned and took my bag for me and put it into the cab. I got into the cab after him and sat across from him. He studied the cab's window, dedicatedly not looking at me.

The cab started down the street and I fidgeted uncomfortably. He sat as still as marble, jaw still tense. It was a long ride to the station and in heavy traffic. He didn't speak for nearly twenty minutes.

When he did he opened and shut his mouth a number of times before saying in a harsh and lecturing tone, "The Latin Dative case in a form of the noun indicative of its use as the indirect object of a verb or in conjunction with particular prepositions."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

His gaze riveted to me, "Do watch your language. Did you or did you not express confusion concerning the Latin Dative in your missive to me?"

I shrugged, "Oh, right."

"As such, I was clarifying its use."

"...thanks."

"You are quite welcome."

He relapsed into silence. I kicked idly at the floor of the cab, after a long pause I said, "I didn't know if you'd even read it."

"It was not long, I found the time." He looked back at me and said in a voice that sounded forced into civility, "How was school? You mentioned friends."

"Oh, yeah, uh, school was fine," I shrugged, I was less sure I could keep up this string of lies in person when I didn't have time to think it out.

He gave me a long time to say more, when I didn't he pressed on. It sounded very much like it was a terrible burden to ask such trivial questions, "Tell me about the boy you spoke of, Jack. I hope he did not lead you to more fighting, you know how I feel about that."

I restrained myself from scratching at the scar down my forearm, "Jack? Oh, yeah he's alright. He went to the uh..the boy's school though. So...didn't see him much."

"...How about your lessons? Did you find them enjoyable?"

My stomach lurched and I thought of Jack, the real Jack purring the anatomy I would never forget. Frontal bone, maxilla, mandible, as he touched them on a corpse. His gentle guidance to help me find the arteries that would bleed a man in minutes.

Interrupting my distraction, Warthrop's hand came out and tilted my face up toward his. I pulled my chin back with a jerk and his hand shot back. He covered the awkwardness with concern that I assumed was faked, "Are you quite all right, Annalee?" he asked, "You seem...unwell."

Terror shivered through me. Did he smell it? Might he open up his medical bag and shine a light into my eyes and see what sort of thing sat across from him?

I shrugged again, "It's just the ship," I murmured at the floor.

"Ah," he said, "Didn't quite get your sea legs?"

I tried to keep my eyes from meeting his. Silence hung in the cab for the rest of the journey, thirty more minutes of only the two of us breathing in the shadows.

When we arrived at the station he took my bag for me and even put out his hand to help me down the steps of the cab. The silence persisted onto the train and well on our way to New Jerusalem.

More than an hour into the journey he finally spoke again. "Tell me more of your year, Anna...lee." He had almost managed to use Will's nickname for me, but lost his nerve at the last moment.

I studied the floor, "Not much to tell, I guess. I did try, you know, in class, even if I didn't do so good."

"I may have over-" he started, "-Will Henry might have-" he paused again, "I am sure by the end of next term you will have risen out of mediocrity."

I crossed my arms and looked resolutely out the window. Finally, after more than twenty further minutes of silence I said, "Did you do anything worthwhile while I was at school?"

He scowled at me, "Of course I did, you were away for nine months, I have done much in that time."

"Will you tell me about any of it? What's the use in telling me that monsters exist if you won't even tell me which ones?"

He conceded on this, if only a little, "I will not tutor you in monstrumology, but I suppose knowing in broad terms what I am working on would do you no harm."

I thought that he had given himself this out so that he might take the opportunity to brag about what he had done all winter.

"The first half of your time away was spent concluding my thesis regarding the creature Will Henry and I were tracking at the time of your departure. _Felis Verulentus,_ it is a creature recently discovered and lacks a common name. But, as I am sure you could tell from the Latin, it is a venomous cat. I believe it to be native to the Netherlands although we found it southern Georgia after it escaped a rather foolish black market dealer of exotic pets."

"Did you kill it?"

"Unfortunately we were forced to, but we were able to retrieve the carcass and bring it back to my laboratory for examination."

"Will says he lost a finger."

He glowered at me, "How would you know that?"

I gave him a look of indignation, "Just because you only write to tell me what a poor job I'm doing at school doesn't mean everybody else does."

He paused, "You and Will Henry write to each other?"

"Yeah, s'that a problem?"

He stiffened his back, "No, it is not. I was just not aware."

I pressed him, "So Will lost his finger?"

"Do you doubt his word? Why would you need me to confirm something that he told you? Why would you bother to correspond with him if you question everything he tells you? If that is your reasoning why would you not write to me and simply inquire about Will Henry's state of affairs?"

I swore, "Can you be less of a horse's ass for twenty minutes?"

He thundered, "I have told you innumerable times to keep a civil tongue in your head."

I lost my fire and backed down, "I don't care, yell however much you want." I turned my head and looked out the window, refusing to give my attention to him.

He let me brood for awhile then said, in a more reasoned tone, "Would you care to hear about the second half of the winter? We received a rather interesting gift from one of my colleagues."

I tried to soften, "Sure, tell me all about it, Pellinore."

In a hesitant tone he said, "If you wish...you may call me 'father' as you did in your letter."

I did look at him then, he was holding himself very still. It would have been easier to imagine that he was made of stone than of flesh. I tilted my lips up in a quirking smile, "Sure...father...tell me about the gift."

"An old friend of mine from Britain acquired it. It was alive when he got it, although it had to be put down before it came across the sea to me. It was getting too large by then to be properly handled. When I received it it was well preserved but nearly seven feet long already." His eyes were aglow with excitement, "I was not even aware that there were breeding females left and here I was able to inspect a young one."

My stomach twisted, "What was it?"

"In the original _linormr_ but, more commonly, the lindworm."

I was torn between laughter and horror. There was no way it wasn't one of mine. Jack had said that they were rare and the timing was too good. Something unbidden swelled in my chest. My father had prided over something I had caught. It had been me that had sliced them out of their mother's corpse. Me that had bottled them up wriggling and tiny and taken them all the way back to England. I almost asked him about the armor, if it had been hard to get through with a scalpel. But, in the nick of time, I remembered myself.

"The hell is that?"

He scowled, "Language, Annalee. A lindworm is a creature native to Scandinavia and parts of Germany. They have been nearly entirely eradicated by the encroachment of civilization, however, and are nowadays nearly nonexistent."

"Right, but what are they?"

He looked at me sufferingly, "A creature not unlike a snake, although they have been called, for want of a better term, a dragon. They are fifty to seventy feet long in maturity and appear like an enormous snake, thickly coated in armor."

"How'd anybody get ahold of a baby?"

"I am not sure, I believe my colleague purchased it from an unwholesome sort of man in London."

"D'you still have it?"

"No," he said, "I sent it to the Monstrumologist Society in New York, it will remain there."

Silence fell again. Less awkward but still not comfortable. He ventured, after a moment, "You told me that you got into a fight with a dog on the street."

"Yep."

"...Were you wounded in any way?"

"No."

"That boy Jack defended you?"

I scowled at him, "You keep forgetting that I been on my own two years in Five Points 'fore I got to you." I said, letting the street sound of the city creep back into my voice. Jack's dislike of the dialect had nearly erased it. "I can take care o' myself."

"Will you tell me how your mother died? And how you got along on your own?"

His voice was of a quality heretofore unheard from the mouth of Pellinore Warthrop, so I gave him a cleaned up version of the truth, "I boxed in the street some," I said, "Or cleaned, did laundry a little. Kept me in food mostly."

He nodded, "And your mother?"

"...a thug knifed her in our apartment."

His body jerked and he stared at me, his dark eyes moving over my face, "She was murdered?"

I tried to meet his gaze, "Yeah."

"Did they apprehend her assailant?"

I laughed a little cruelly, "I lived in _Five Points_ d'you got any idea what it's like? You ever been near there?"

Coldly he answered, "I have not."

I shrugged harshly, "It's run by gangsters, Whyo's mostly, police don't get up there much. Nobody cared if some broad from the slums got knocked off. They cared less that another kid was out on the streets."

"I am beginning to understand why you were not afraid when I told you of the existence of monsters."

I gave him the most honest answer I could, "I am not afraid of anything."

His dark eyes seemed to be trying to peel back my skin to look within. I held his gaze steadily. Finally he changed the subject and said, "Will Henry has been greatly anticipating your arrival."

"That's what he said in his letter."

His next question was posed delicately, "Do the two of you write frequently?"

"I guess."

"And when you pen your reply is it more than a paragraph filled with foul language?"

I gave him a sneering smirk, "Well when he writes me it's more than a paragraph of condescension."

"Are you telling me that you expected long and emotive missives from me?"

I scoffed, "Just saying you get what you give, old man."

"And he writes you effusively?"

"What?"

He looked annoyed, "Writes a lot," he clarified, "Long letters."

I shrugged, "Honest letters, not always long. Look, what's between me and Will is between me and Will."

The angles of his face seemed to sharpen with his sneer, "He is my assistant and you are my...daughter. Any fraternization between the two of you is entirely my business."

"No it damn well ain't!" I almost shouted at him, then, softer almost like a plea I said, "Don't read what I send him. They're Will's letters, not yours."

He clenched his jaw, gritting his teeth, then loosed them and said in what was clearly attempting to be a reasoned tone, "I sent you away from my home, Annalee, to protect you from the dangers of Monstrumology. Those employed in such a profession do well to take neither lovers nor wives, do I make myself clear?"

"Are you saying don't marry Will or don't fuck a city broad and leave her with a kid?"

He recoiled at the language and the accusation, "Annalee."

"Don't worry, _Doctor Warthrop_ I'll send you a letter 'fore Will and I run off together."

"Then the two of you are courting," it was not a question.

I swore again, "No, alright, if you gotta know, we aren't. For Christ's sake we just write letters. S'not like you're good company for him."

He ignored the last comment, "You ought to leave it that way."

The first thing I heard upon entering 425 Harrington Lane was thundering footsteps coming down the stairs. A moment later Will appeared in the doorway to the foyer and, regardless of the doctor who stood right next to me, threw his arms around me in an embrace. I held him back, just as tightly.

"Anna!" He said in my ear, "You're here!"

The doctor cleared his throat and Will released me instantaneously. He _was_ taller than he had been the last time we had seen each other. His shoulders had broadened too. He had almost lost the look of the boy I had said goodbye to and seemed much more a young man. His hair, however, still stuck up in an untidy brown mess and his earnest smile had not changed.

"Hello, Will," I said a little breathlessly.

"Bring her suitcase upstairs for her, Will Henry," the doctor barked, "And snap to!"

"Of course," He said, grinning at me and taking my case, "I made dinner, in case you were hungry. Are you?"

"Yes," I said smiling back at him.

He disappeared briefly back up the stairs. The doctor glowered at me and I followed him into the kitchen.

Will reappeared at the kitchen door a moment later, still grinning. He ladled stew out for each of us and took a seat beside me. The doctor looked between us with narrowed eyes.

It was an odd feeling, sitting next to Will. We had lived together only briefly and really written quite infrequently, but I felt so tightly bonded to him. His arm rested next to mine on the table and our forearms leaned against one another. His forefinger was indeed gone, pink puckered scar where it had been. The doctor looked between us with a foul expression.

"You don't look as scrawny as you did last summer," I said to him.

He nudged me with his shoulder with mock irritation, "I was never scrawny."

I nudged him back, "Whatever you say, Henry."

"Will Henry," the doctor said sharply, "If you're finished glutting yourself there is cleaning to be done in the basement."

Will shrugged himself to his feet and said, sounding only a little disappointed, "Yes, sir."

"I can help him," I offered and he looked at Warthrop hopefully.

"No," Warthrop retorted with finality, "I am sure you are tired from traveling."

"No, I'm not," I said, "I'll help Will."

He gave in with a huff, "Fine, assist Will Henry, but I expect both of you to be working with utmost efficiency."

"Course we will, doc- uh - father," I said, ending somewhat awkwardly.

He seemed mollified and swooped into the library, leaving Will and I alone.

The moment he was out of the room I launched myself back into Will's arms, kissing him on the cheek, "I missed you, Will," I said into his ear.

He gripped me back tightly and pressed his lips against my hair, "Glad you're safe, Anna."

We stood together for almost an entire minute with our arms wrapped around each other. I had not realized the amount of tension it induced to be around Jack Kearns until I was back beside Will Henry. I felt his shoulders ease under my hands and he was almost slumped against me. I also pressed myself close, burying my face against his neck. He swayed slightly as he held me.

Finally, we loosened our holds on each other and he looked at me with eyes the color of honey. "We should get to work," he said at long last and release me entirely.

I followed him downstairs to the laboratory that I had never been to. It was dingy and dark, filled with sour smells of chemicals. Our work was a milieu of glassware and necropsy tools that needed washing up. Will did all of the washing, with me drying them, careful to prevent water spots.

In a whisper I could almost not hear he said, "So, tell me about your monster hunting. You promised."

I did. Leaving out the bit about the kidnapping, I told him about the wolf fight, the adrenaline and rush. I told him about the German castle and the lindworm, rolling on its head and my companion shooting it out from under me. He was rapt in his attention, leaving off the cleaning to listen.

"Did Warthrop tell you that we got a lindworm? Was that coincidence?" he asked.

"No," I said with excitement, "It was one of mine, the one we got was a female, we took her babies after she was dead."

"You should have seen Warthrop's face when he saw it!" Will hissed, "He was over the moon. But you said you had scars to show off."

I showed him the line across my fingers from knife throwing and the cut up my wrist. He showed much more interest in my wrist, tracing the thick scar with his finger and inspecting it under the lamp light.

"Now you," I prompted.

He went back to washing and I to drying and he told me about his winter in every detail. Telling him about my escapades and released something in my chest. I felt unburdened, lighter than I had. I could see the same effect acting upon him. His eyes glowed more the longer he spoke. Finally, at the end of his stories, he showed me his hand up close. He showed me the the other scars he had too, from previous fights. Bites on his arm and scars marring his chest.

"Will Henry! Annalee!" Warthrop called from the doorway, "Are you finished yet? You have been down there far longer than necessary. You must have finished with the cleaning."

I heard the distrust in his voice and I could imagine what he thought. Will, red blooded and fifteen pressing me, pretty and just short of fifteen against the wall in the dark and secluded basement. Lips pressed to each other and to necks. Hands exploring under the hems of shirt and bodice.

I understood the concern. It would be blatantly wrong to call me less than pretty, and an abject lie not to concede that Will had become quite handsome. But there was no fire between Will and I. His touch was sweetness, not temptation.

Will started up the stairs, "Yes, sir!" he said, "We're done." Halfway through his voice cracked awkwardly and he coughed in embarrassment. I followed him up and endured the doctor scanning over our clothing with a distrustful eye.

"It is late, time for bed, both of you," he said after finding no obvious faults in our appearances.

I felt light and girlish, relieved of the burden that had been so onerously mounted on my shoulders. I gave Warthrop a gleaming smile over my shoulder as I headed toward the stairs and said, just before I went through the door, "G'night, father."

He stiffened, "Goodnight, Annalee."

Will followed after me. He stopped briefly in the hall at my door, halfway between the landing and the ladder that led to his loft, "Goodnight, Anna," he said, kissing my hair again, "I am glad to have you back."

"Night, Will."

That night, I woke with a cry. The dead of night was still around me and I shook with the visions that had plagued my dreams. A body in pieces, blood on my face. A heavy frame knocking me to the ground in an alley. My nightgown and sheets were damp with sweat.

I lay back against my pillows, trying to purge the ugly visions from my eyes. That was when I heard it. Soft cries that filtered into my room broken by long and keening moans. I got out of bed and felt my way in the dark to the door.

When I reached the hallway it was obvious where the noise came from. It was not Pellinore Warthrop's cries and thrashing abouts from the left. Those I would have ignored. It came from the right, and the voice was too tender for Wartrhop's anyway. Will.

I climbed up the ladder and pushed open the door, coming halfway into his loft, "Will?" I called out softly, "Will."

His body thrashed up, twisted in the sheets. I could see his outline silhouetted in the moonlight coming in from the window behind him. His hair stuck up and his breath came hard.

"Will, are you alright?"

"Anna?" He asked blearily, "Did I wake you? I'm sorry. I'm alright. I'm fine. It was just...just a nightmare."

"No you didn't wake me...I was already awake."

The pause was filled up by his breath, slowly returning to normal, "You too?"

"Yes, me too... Do you want me to go?"

He ran his hands through his hair and said, voice shaking, "No...I...I want you to stay." He lurched, suddenly uncomfortable, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't ask you to...not in my bedroom...I'm sorry, Anna."

"I'll stay," I said, climbing entirely into the loft and shutting the door after me. I approached his bed and with trepidation he shifted over to the far side of it.

"I don't want to make you uncomfortable," he said.

I laid down on his bed, facing him. I reached out my hand and he took it in his. His skin was clammy and cold.

We lay there, him somewhat awkward and me restrained for several minutes. His breathing was calmer than it had been and he no longer shook. I reached out in the dark and pushed his sweaty hair back from his forehead. This broke his reticence and he tugged more forward.

Considerate and kind he opened his arms and allowed me to succumb, pulling myself into the warmth of his body. He wrapped his arms around me and ducked his head against mine. Shrouded in the dark and holding each other so dearly neither I nor he was capable of keeping ourselves contained. Alongside mine, his body renewed its shaking, terrible tremors passing up his spine and down his arms. His hands grasping my back and holding me flush to him. I twisted my fingers into the fabric on the back of his nightshirt and held him desperately to me.

It was curious. We were, both of us, entirely starved for affection, so utterly destitute that we hung onto each other as though we were staving off drowning. But, as in the basement, there was no quickening of the blood. It was the dam we had both put up against the things that we had seen breaking away with the force of mutual company.

"Please, Anna," he said into my ear, "Promise you will….that you won't...no matter what I have done."

"No matter what you've done, Will," I whispered back, "Promise me too."

He pressed his lips to my forehead, "I promise. I promise."

"Will," I whispered into his skin, "I'm afraid that I am a monster."

His fingers brushed back my damp hair from my forehead, "Then you're in luck," he breathed, "For I am uniquely trained to understand you."

For two months, the summer was as idyllic as it was possible to be at Harrington Lane. I helped Will keep the house and clean up after the doctor. Will occasionally disappeared into the basement and was kept late hours.

Warthrop and I were in somewhat of a stasis, neither affectionate nor indifferent. He did make a point of making forced conversation with me when we had breakfast together. Mostly, he went on long tangential lectures and Will and I sighed and exchanged commiserating glances.

Since the first night, I had spent each night either in Will's loft, or he in my room. He soothed my nightmares and I his. I knew the fury it might send Warthrop into if we were discovered, but it was worth the risk. Will was beginning to feel like a portion of my own self forged in the male form. As he had the first night, he understood half formed sentences and thoughts I did not myself fully comprehend.

I too, drew meaning from the barest look in his honey eyes or the shiver in his brow. If there were an ingredient to the human form, the stone that made Warthrop or the smoke that filled Kearns, Will and I were made of something the same one.

It was in July when Hell came down in the form of Pellinore Warthrop.

He walked into the kitchen where Will and I ate. His entire body was tense, more tense than I had ever seen it. His face was held in such perfect icy stillness it would have been easier to believe that he were a mannequin than a man. His eyes, darkened near to black and filled with thunderstorm were riveted to me.

He stopped at the opposite side of the table and reached out a hand. It moved slowly with deliberate intent. On the table before me he put a letter written on horrible and familiar stationary.

 _The Esteemed Doctor Pellinore Warthrop,_

 _I write, unfortunately, to express my confusion and concern in regards to the correspondence you sent to me in June. You wrote inquiring after the academic standing of your daughter, Miss Annalee Warthrop. You expressed your satisfaction that her progress had improved and asked for specificities to the nature of her academic flaws. You also requested detailed analyses from her professors regarding how best you might assist her to improve further._

 _However, I must express my humble confusion. We have in our records correspondence from you, dated October the Twenty Third, declaring that a family emergency required Miss Warthrop's immediate return to America and the conclusion of her enrollment at the West Chariot School for Girls. I must confess that due to the brevity of her enrollment we sent you neither a report of her midterm progress, nor certainly her final term progress, for which she did not attend._

 _Please send further correspondence if you would like to renew her enrollment at West Chariot School for Girls this September._

 _Your Obedient Servant,_

 _Mister Gerard Waverly,_

 _Headmaster_

My blood went cold in my veins and I raised my eyes from the letter to my father. His nostrils were flared and his jaw was set.

I had nothing to say, it was obvious what I had done, a man like Warthrop would not have had trouble putting together the pieces.

It would have been easier if he had screamed, but his voice was low and deadly, each word meticulously pronounced, "Whatever does Mister Gerard Waverly mean, Annalee, when he says that you have not been enrolled at the West Chariot School for Girls since October of last year? Because it was my belief that you were enrolled until the end of the term, and that you received mediocre results. Is that not what I was informed of in the missive from your school? However did I receive your marks if you were not in attendance to earn them?"

Will had gone stiff beside me and I could feel him shiver. It was what drove me to talk. If there was any salvaging to be had, it would be to keep Pellinore from discovering that Will had had any knowledge of my truancy.

"I sent the marks. Forged them, I mean, on stolen stationary," I said, trying to look him in the eye.

He leaned forward, "You will tell me why. You will spare no detail."

I scooted my chair back from him and ran my hand awkwardly through my hair, "I was failing. I was failing out of everything," my voice shook a little, unexpectedly. He had sent a letter asking how he could help me improve. For the first time, I felt the stirrings of guilt that I had let him down so utterly. "I didn't have any friends, I didn't know what anybody was ever talking about. They were going to kick me out."

"You were _failing_? How difficult could it have been? How thick headed are you, Annalee? That you could not even manage your first year of studies?"

I fired up at once in defense of myself, "I'm not thick headed, I just never got taught how to read French! I really tried hard, you know, but I couldn't catch up!"

He snapped back, "And you did not think to say anything to me? Your first reaction was to take matters upon yourself and _deceive me_? You might have simply sent a letter telling me that you were unable to keep up with even the most rudimentary of your studies."

I sneered at him, "Why? So you could haul me back here and ignore me like last summer? Remember them Greek lessons you tried? How'd that go, Pellinore?" My New York accent had flared back so readily in my anger than his name came out closer to 'Pellinow' than 'Pellinore.' I kept on, "You think I wanted to come back 'ere and sit in my room wit you and Will goin' off afta monsta's?"

His hand moved to hit me across the face and I leapt back, pulling my knife from my boot on instinct. He drew back in a jolt and Will cried out, "Anna!"

I took another step away from him and slid my knife back.

Oddly, insanely, this diffused the situation. Pellinore's look lost its vitriol and became clinical. Mine sheepish rather than wrathful.

"Sorry," I offered, "It was just..."

His voice much softer Pellinore said, "Give me the knife, Annalee."

I shook my head. I was not about to be disarmed, not even in this house inhabited by only Will and Warthrop. Nor was I going to arm a man who had just tried to hit me.

He tried a different tact, "Would you give it, instead, to Will Henry? I am certain he will eventually give it back."

I looked at Will who nodded at me encouragingly. But I shook my head again.

Although he watched me carefully, he forged onward, "Why do you keep a knife in your boot like a thug on the street?"

I sneered, "I _was_ a thug on the street, Pellinore. Most o' my life I was a thug on the street. I don't know why you keep forgetting."

"There is no need to arm yourself in your own home."

I snarled a laugh, "My mother got knifed in my apartment 'n my father hunts monsters, I think there's plenty reason."

"I suppose I can concede you that. What did you do to sustain yourself? For God's sake what did you _do_ all year if you were not in school?"

I shoved my hands in my pockets and scowled at the floor, "Same's I did in New York."

His lip curled, "Fought in the street?" He tilted his head like a viper and said, eyes not moving from mine, "Will Henry, how did she spend the year?"

"Will doesn't know anything!" I said defensively. If anything, this convinced him more thoroughly that Will did indeed know something.

" _Will Henry._ "

He was twisting his fingers together and not looking at me. I saw him chewing the inside of his lip. My heart broke with my resolve. I would not ask Will to choose between his loyalty to me and his loyalty to Pellinore. I spoke before Will had a chance, "I was hunting monsters."

The shock that went through Warthrop seemed to electrify the entire room. My only consolation was the smile of thanks Will offered me, understanding as he always did, what I had done.

Understanding cleared the doctor's features, "The dog?"

"Beast of Gova-"I stuttered, forgetting the French name.

Quietly he finished the name for me, "Gévaudan. A Beast of Gévaudan. There were reports of one in Lorraine. You are saying that you took part in the hunt for it?"

I looked up at him, trying to read his expression, but it was indiscernible. I nodded.

"Did you or did you not say to me that it was you who killed it? That cannot have been the case. Beasts of Gévaudan are nearly two thousand pounds. It is simply not possible that a girl of your size and age could have withstood it."

I didn't waste my breath trying to convince him. I drew my little knife again, flipped it so I held it by the blade and threw it the opposite direction of either Will or Pellinore. My torso twisted just as Jack had taught me. The knife spun elegantly through the kitchen and lodged itself deep and point first into the center of a decoration on the kitchen wall.

Warthrop, who had flinched when I launched into my display, approached the knife and yanked it from the wall.

His back to me, long fingers touching the mark on the wall he said, "I told you before, Annalee, Monstrumology is not a profession for a young lady."

"I'm not so much a young lady."

"I will find you a remedial school for next year. You will stay there. Do I make myself understood?"

"Sir?" It was Will, speaking up unsurely.

"What is it, Will Henry?"

"I don't mean to disagree with you, sir-"

"Obviously you do, else you would not be speaking."

"She'll run away from that one too. She's going to find a way to hu- study monstrumology with or without your permission."

"And what would possibly give you authority on that, Will Henry?

"She told me, sir."

"She _told you_ , Will Henry? I find that highly improbable. You mean to tell me that before it was even conceived of that she would be sent to a different school she told you this plan? Or do you mean perhaps that she telepathed you the idea just now?"

Will scowled, "I mean she as good as told me, sir. In a letter. I can show you."

"Will!" I said, betrayed.

He looked at me with big eyes, "Trust me, Anna."

I hesitated and bit my lip, but those eyes were undeniable, catching the light from the window and looking golden more than brown, "Alright, Will."

He ran upstairs and came back clutching my letter. He read the part he meant out loud before he gave it to Pellinore, "' _I feel it like a calling from the stuff of the world itself, Will, and I can't turn it aside. I want to see everything that lurks in the dark, to rip it open and look it in the face. '"_

Pellinore snatched the letter from Will's hands and read it over. He would know now about the lindworm too. He said nothing for a very long time. Finally, not looking up from the letter he said, "I will teach you, Annalee, but I will not take you into the field."

I smiled, not at Warthrop, but at Will, who smiled back. There were different things in our smiles though. He saw a long term companion who would keep him company during the tedium of lab work and be waiting for him to return from adventures. I only saw that I would get two months of instruction on monstrumology. Even promised tutelage under Warthrop, I had no doubt that October the seventeenth would find me on that ship with Jack.

Being taught monstrumology by Dr. Pellinore Warthrop was exactly as exciting as I had anticipated it being. Which is to say, dull to such a degree than only Will's presence kept me from gouging out my eyes with spoons. It was almost entirely trailing after him listening to endless lectures about esoteric details that I did not care about or understand.

It was also cleaning up after him and convincing him to eat when he refused. It was long hours copying his notes and letters. It was going through endless newspapers. And, all through September it was waiting for he and Will to return from an expedition. I was so bored during that month and a half that I nearly wrote a letter to Jack, just to complain about it.

The only benefits, and I could only scrounge up two, were that I was free to both practice my knife throwing and research the Mohan. And, to give him credit, there was probably no place else in the world better to research a monstrous creatures than Pellinore Warthrop's library. It took me only three days to find information on the Mohan. It became clear within the book's first paragraph, why I was integral to Jack's hunt.

But, once I had found the few books he had on the subject, I soon exhausted them and was returned to a state of abject boredom. I missed Will and even more, if that were possible, I missed the thrill of adventure. I wanted to feel my blood sing in my veins again and longed for it like an addiction. I could throw my little knife, or Jack's gifted slightly bigger knife. I could scramble up door jambs and pull myself up and down eaves and window ledges. I could sprint through the countryside and leap over tables. But I could not capture even an iota of the battle lust that rumbled into my marrow when a hunt was afoot.

Weeks turned into a month, and still they had not returned. They had not even told me where they were going.

When it reached October 10th I begrudgingly, and with much disappointment, admitted to myself that I would be leaving while Will was away for a second time. I would have had to leave on the fifteenth, the next time a train would be going from New Jerusalem to New York. I sharpened both of my knives and packed by bag a hundred times, looking out the window all the while. I had a gutted fear that I would not see Will again, at least not for a long time. I would not so easily be able to come back after I ran away. But I could not bring myself to forgo meeting Jack.

On the eleventh, I sat at the kitchen table, struggling over a letter to leave explaining where I had gone. It was then that I heard the door open and my heart exploded into pounding. I shoved the paper into my pocket and darted into the foyer. Bedraggled and travel worn, Will and Warthrop stood in the doorway.

I launched myself at Will and clung to me with equal desperation. Warthrop, giving no greeting, brushed passed us into the house, "Will Henry, there is much to do in preparation, snap to!"

Will pulled away from me, smiling. I heard his stomach give a vicious rumble.

"I'll make dinner," I said, kissing his cheek, "Go help Doctor Fussy. Tell me about your hunt after"

He returned my kiss and followed his master.

Pellinore allowed Will a few moments to gulp down the dinner, wherein he told me that the creature they were hunting had entirely eluded them before they were forced to return with haste. Soon after we were both put to work copying out notes for some sort of lecture. Warthrop had not even stopped to clean himself up from travelling. Dark circles were under his eyes and, even more than Will, he looked malnourished. Mad energy was about him, driving him forward with no regard to his physical state.

"What's this for anyway?" I asked two hours into listening to him revise and edit a horrifically boring speech, "Why'd you come back if you didn't catch what you were after?"

He glared at me for interrupting him, "The Annual Colloquium at the Society is upcoming. I have been asked to appear as a keynote speaker. It is because of that that I was forced to return from our unsuccessful venture. The Colloquium is of utmost importance, both of you will be in attendance. Annalee, you will _behave yourself._."

"When is it?"

"The seventeenth of October."

"Where is it?"

"New York City. We leave on the fifteenth."

"If you insist," I said. But what a gift he had given me.

If Warthrop hadn't been so caught up in preparing for the honor of delivering his keynote address, I'm sure he would have realized I was up to something. I can't imagine I kept my churning nerves to myself. Will knew something. He kept giving me long and searching looks, but he said nothing in front of the doctor and we had no time in private. Warthrop had put us up in two rooms, one for he and Will, the other for me. In such close quarters there was no way to sneak off to see each other, even in the dark of the night.

But I had proceeded in making a plan of escape for myself, even if I had no time to tell Will what I was up to. The plan I had laid out for myself was delicately timed, although fate seemed to have intervened to a remarkable degree. On October the seventeenth we were required at lectures that would last until two o'clock. Warthrop's would be first, and we would sit watching him in his family's box. I corrected my thinking awkwardly, _our_ family's box. After the lectures, at three o'clock, we would be meeting for a late luncheon with one of Warthrop's colleagues. That meant that when we left to travel between these two locations, I would make my escape to meet Jack on the docks.

This meant, of course, that everything I intended to bring would have to be inconspicuously on my person. For that reason, I was glad that October in New York was chilly. Warthrop had purchased for me a new fashionable dress, and a woman's dress rather than a girl's. In 1891, this meant a bustle at the back and a large voluminous skirt. Under the skirt I wore my trousers, new sleek trousers I had spent some of my lindworm earnings on. I wore my new boots on my feet and walked with care not to let them peek from under my skirt. One knife resided in the boot, the other strapped to my thigh. The remainder of my money I had packed in the bodice of my dress.

The morning was impossible. The lectures, starting with Warthrop's and, if possible, getting more boring from there, were insufferable. I only stayed awake through them due to the flutter of nerves in my belly. When the last lecture ended at two fifteen, I was antsy to leave. Warthrop had joined us by then and, as the final applause ended, he rose to lead us to the street.

We had not made it more than ten feet from the box when he was stopped and congratulated by a fellow monstrumologist. Another one after that. All of them seemed to be clamoring to shake his hand and tell him what an impressive speech he gave. I noticed, however, that each monstrumologist gave me more than a passing glance. I would not say anything to him, but I suspected laying eyes on a daughter that Warthrop, still unmarried, had suddenly appeared with, might have been a bigger draw than whatever the hell he had blathered about for forty minutes.

Still, the clock that hung in the anteroom of the Society building read a quarter to three by the time we were making our way to the street. My heart pounded erratically in my chest. It was not my intention to get on the hansom cab that awaited us. I did wish that there were fewer of Pellinore's colleagues around. I harbored the twin fears that one of them would react to a call to aid from him and that my flight would cause him such embarrassment that he would never forgive me.

In the hubbub I waited until my father was halfway into the cab before I pulled Will back. I pressed a kiss to his cheek and whispered, "Goodbye, Will." Then spun and took off, sprinting as fast as I could in my double layers away from the cab.

"Doctor Warthrop!" He called out.

Over my shoulder I saw my father turn from where he was, poised in the door to the cab. He saw me immediately, streaking passed his contemporaries.

"Annalee!" He thundered.

But I paid him no mind. I knew these streets far better than he did. I slid into an alley and divested myself of my lady's clothing, ripping them off more than undoing the laces. I was left in only the shirt and trousers I had had underneath. Unencumbered I fled away toward the docks.

The fifteen minutes I had to travel the many blocks to the pier seemed to go by in a blink of dodging between cabs and pedestrians. I could smell the salt air and hear the noises of ships. But I could also hear the bells going off, alerting me that my time was up. How promptly would the ship leave?

I skidded around the last building and the pier came into sight. Dock twenty three was just in front of me. I looked up and saw her, _The Explorer._ She was not large, no steel commercial vessel. Tri-masted and wooden, sitting low in the water. But she was already shipping out, her last lines being cast off. I saw him standing on the deck, blond hair tied back and fluttering in the sea breeze. Jack Kearns was dressed as elegantly as ever, arms crossed over his chest. A small crease of unhappiness marred his handsome face.

I started up the dock at full pelt, "JACK!" I shouted.

His face lit up in a sunny smile when he saw me and called back, "Best hurry, Lee."

I pressed myself forward into a sprint, ready to leap from the end of the dock when I was seized by the wrist and wrenched back. I turned back, fist raised against my assailant. Pellinore Warthrop had me by the wrist, dark eyes looking madly between me and Jack Kearns.

"Annalee," he said, he was out of breath, his clothing ruffled. Will was half a block behind him, racing to keep up. "Is _that_ who took you hunting? Jack Kearns? Tell me, Annalee!"

I pulled on my wrist, "Let go!"

There was panic in his voice that I had not ever heard there before, "You will not go with him, Annalee, not _him._ "

There was a part of me that wanted to listen to him, to go back to the lunch date and the relative safety of Pellinore Warthrop. But the call to the hunt was too fierce and I could do nothing but answer it.

"Sorry, pop," I said and drew my knife from my boot and slashing it shallowly across his fingers. He let go at once and I launched myself away from him, pelting up the dock. The ship was ten feet out, too far to make the jump, but I could not help but try. I launched myself from the very edge of the dock and could hear my father racing behind me, feel him reaching out after me to arrest my jump.

But I was a hairsbreadth too swift for him. I arced across the gap toward the ship. I called out to him again, reaching for him, "Jack!"

My jump was just short of long enough. My toes touched the edge of the deck but I did not have enough momentum to swing myself toward it. I began to tip back, flailing wildly to catch hold of something. Jack's hand flashed out and pulled me securely onto the deck of the ship. I was out of breath, heaving from exertion. I straightened, Jack's hand on my shoulder.

His hand raised in a little wave, he looked back at the dock, face alight with unmitigated glee. Pellinore stood at the very edge of the dock, cravat loose, hair tussled and blood trickling from his fingers. His face was livid with anger, eyes torrid returning Jack's stare.

At his side was Will whose gaze was just for me. Unlike his master he did not look angry, but horror struck.


	4. Bloodshed, Bloodshed Everywhere

**Chapter 4: Bloodshed Bloodshed Everywhere, Nor Not a Drop to Drink**

I had had neither the foresight nor the time to slide my knife back into my sheath on my ankle before my jump. As such, I had sliced my hand on the blade sometime during my flight. Blood slipped from the cut down my fingers and dripped onto the deck. I ought to have seen it for the warning that it was.

We stood on the deck of the ship until the two figures on the pier were out of sight. Now that I had my breath back and was not immured my Will's despondent gaze, I was stiff under Jack's heavy hand. We looked at each other at the same time. My frowning uncertainty met by his disbelieving ecstasy.

His voice was a low purr when he spoke, "I ought to be angry with you, Lee, for deceiving me."

My frown deepened.

"And," He added, "For allowing me to buy you such an exquisitely anagrammed gift engraved with incorrect initials. It ought to have been an A.W. oughten it, _Miss Warthrop?_ "

Although it was obvious I said, "You know my father."

He laughed almost wickedly, "Oh, do I ever know your father, Lee Warthrop." His grin was sliding further over his face, revealing his gleaming teeth, "A wealthy but busy father indeed." His eyes burned with hunger and his voice slipped into a velveteen whisper, "You murdered mother, tell me Lee, was it Muriel Chandler?"

"Who the hell is Muriel Chandler?"

He laughed, "My god, could it be that the august and upright Pellinore had an indiscretion?"

My mouth twisted into a sneer, "Obviously he did, Kearns."

His brows rose in mock hurt, "Am I 'Kearns' now, Lee? After we have gone through so much together? You wound me."

I looked down at my feet and kicked at the deck of the ship, "Keep it up and I'll really wound you."

This made him erupt into laughter and ruffle my hair, "We are underfoot up on deck during cast off, my girl, let's retire to our stateroom."

He led me into the bowels of the ship into a small common area occupied already by two other gentlemen, one nursing a whiskey, the other looking through the porthole. Jack walked passed them and through a narrow door, I followed him, not looking at the others. One of the others watched my progress with some interest, the other's gaze was hawk like. This too, ought to have been taken for what it was.

Jack closed the door behind me and shut us into the tiny space. It was hardly more than five feet wide, either side of it almost wholly taken up by two narrow cots, one on each side. One of them had a case slid beneath it as well as Jack's black bag I had carted out of the dead cabby's hansom.

If this was a stateroom, it wasn't much of one. There was no porthole so, even now in the middle of the day the room was lit only by a small lantern. It cast long shadows over Jack's face which was still covered in that damnable grin. We were forced to stand very close in that stateroom and my hand itched to retrieve my knife.

"So," he began, "You are not the fruit of the fair Muriel, whoever _was_ your mother?"

"She's a corpse, Jack, she's nobody," I had fairly spat it out, my lips twisting into a terrible sneer.

His reaction to my vitriol was only to smile wider, "I do find it telling that, out of a world full of pseudonyms you might have selected you chose Henry. You must harbor quite the fondness for our own sweet William."

I bared my teeth at him, "Shut your mouth about Will."

Danger crept into his eyes and he turned his head to the side, his face becoming that blank and empty thing, "Allow me to give you another lesson, Annalee Warthrop. Do try not to betray the existence of the people you have so foolishly allowed into your heart. Particularly not to men such as me."

I let her rise up from within me, the girl who had murdered her own mother and could not feel fear, I let her wear my skin and show herself and the icy barricades she had constructed between my ribs. And I allowed her to show her face to Jack Kearns. When I spoke, I did not recognize my voice, it was flat and clear, when the words left my lips they did not sound a threat, but a statement of fact, "If you hurt Will Henry, I'll put a knife through your throat."

He rolled back onto his heels, tripling the space between us and reaffixing the smile to his face, "Well then, my girl, it is a good thing that we have left him in New York."

As I had seen going into our stateroom there were two other passengers on _The Explorer._ The elder of the two was a man somewhere in his late twenties or early thirties names Reuben Irving. He was a well dress but overly muscular man, barrel chested and stocky armed. His face always bore a ruddy red quality that was enhanced by the scarlet kerchief he kept tied about his throat.

The other man, the one with the hawk's gaze, whom I quickly learned to be his begrudging companion, was a different sort entirely. No more than twenty he was lean, nearly skinny and bearing the unwieldy name of Fitzhugh Edgington. I say unwieldy as though I do not have a father named _Pellinore_. Fitzhugh, or Fitzy as his companion called him, was bespectacled and shivery, prone to long bouts of pretentiousness.

I took to neither of them. The same threshold I had crossed when my father had elected to buy me a woman's dress instead of a girl's made me, as was made apparent by the attentions of my gentleman co-passengers, something to be sought after. Although I wore the clothing of a man, for who would go on an adventure wearing a skirt? I was treated as nothing but a young lady. It drove me near to madness.

My appearance on the ship, in fact, caused no end of hubub. Jack, it seemed, had paid for a second passenger but said nothing about the sex of said passenger. But, separated from most of the sailors, the most immediate of this hubub came from Misters Edington and Irving. Their gazes rarely left me and the masculine outfits that had once offered me freedom from such attentions only increased them. I had purchased tight fitting pants, thinking only of clamboring through the underbrush of the Columbian forests, but this had set me up for irritation. Their eyes, particularly Edington's eyes, cleaved to my outlined legs like maggots in a fetid carcass.

I yearned for the days when introducing myself as 'Lee' was enough to convince people of my maleness. Even Jack who was supremely observant had thought me a boy. But my treacherous body had refused to widen in the shoulder and instead begun to form the gentle swell of my developing bosom and the steady widening of my hips.

This threw me into a tumult of conflicting emotions I did not have the time or energy for. Privately, when I laid in my bunk with Jack sleeping across the narrow divide from me, I enjoyed the newcoming shape of my body, liking the pretty slenderness in my fingers and smooth curves that had started to become evident at my sides. But in the light of day it was all rather inconvenient.

Thankfully, other than occasional teasing over my newly discovered paternity, Jack's opinion of me seemed entirely unchanged by my beginnings of femininity.

On the third night of our voyage, I was laying on my bunk, getting a bit of respite from the attention of the other two passengers. Jack was standing near to the lantern, travel mirror in one hand, razor in the other. There was no good place to set the mirror, so he was forced to try to do his shaving one handed. I let this go on until a crease appeared between his brows.

"You want some help over there, Jack?"

"Why else would I have paid for your passage?"

I smiled and stood up, taking the mirror from him so he was free to fix up his silly little mustache. He finished with alacrity and washed off his face, grinning at me, with now smooth cheeks. I tossed him the mirror and his slid his shaving tools back into his bag.

"You might think to clean yourself up too," he said, "You've been wearing those clothes since we got on this ship."

"Didn't have a chance to bring anything else, this is all I've got."

"Well fix your hair, at least," he said, "You look entirely too much like dear Pellinore."

I tried to make myself a bit more presentable, if it was so important to him, but did not lend the task my full attention, "Why do you care what I look like, anyhow?"

He grinned, "We are having supper with our two companions, I would like my estimable charge to look the part."

"Fine then," I said, "I'll wear one of yours."

I expected him to argue, but he did not, "Take the blue one, it is the smallest."

I exchanged my shirt for his blue one and tucked it in, making it seem reasonably well tailored. I looked by no means like a lady, but a bit less dirty.

I didn't let him near my hair, not wanting the fuss of his elaborate constructions. A few twists and a ribbon kept it out of my way and was deemed acceptable by Jack.

"Must we eat with them?" I whined.

"Do you have somewhere better to be?" He asked, "Come now, it will be fun."

"For you maybe, I don't like Edgington."

He disregarded me and sauntered into the main room. There was nothing for me to do but follow, taking a seat beside him.

The other two men were already there, Irving gave me a wide and honest smile, "Nice to see you out and about, Miss Sweeting, hope you're getting over that sea sickness. Takes a couple days, don't it." His accent was a cordial midwestern one, "Nice to see you back on your pretty feet."

I gave a thin smile, "Yes, I'm doing better. Thank you, Mister Irving." Jack had been clear that I was to comport myself like a lady.

"Good to hear it, good to hear it, come now, eat up!" He passed a bowl of the food that had been brought to us from the kitchens. I did take some. Irving was really not so bad.

Edgington adjusted his spectacles and fixed me with a predatory gaze, "Do not fret, Miss Sweeting, it is only that the female body requires more gentle care. You will come to no long term harm from a bit of seasickness."

I clenched only of my fists beneath the table. Of course, I hadn't even been seasick, I'd only said it for an excuse to remain locked up in our stateroom all day. Regardless, that wasn't the point. "Thanks so much for the reassurance, Mister Edgington," I said through gritted teeth.

"Oh, it is _Doctor_ Edgington, Miss Sweeting."

Jack, seeming to understand that I would not be able to keep my temper through much more conversation with Edgington cut across me, "Doctor? Whatever are you a doctor of at such a tender age?"

He drew himself up pretentiously, "I am a doctor of biology, youngest out of an American University actually." His nasally voice grated on me, "And you, Mister Darling? Whatever do you do?"

Jack purred at him, "Oh, it is _Doctor_ Darling, actually."

Edgington perked up, "Doctor? And what are you a doctor of?"

Jack's grin was sharp, "I am a surgeon."

Edgington nearly sneered, "Ghastly business, isn't it? All that slicing people up?"

I had to cough to hide my smile and but Jack responded without pause, "I have always rather enjoyed it."

"So what's the girl doing with you, Doc?" Iriving asked, "Pretty thing your niece or something?"

"Miss Sweeting is my apprentice."

Last time I had been his assistant, I tried not to grin.

Edgington spluttered, "You _apprentice_ my God, good man, surgery is a bit gruesome for one of the fairer sex, is it not." He turned to me, "Would you not rather be off with your lady friends, discussing the latest bit of gossip?"

"If I had, why would I have gotten on a ship with him?" I asked.

He tsked, "Well, you see, I actually have read a paper on just that topic. It is the thought of modern psychology that a woman is helpless to succumb to the suggestions of a man in authority. It is why these suffragettes are so misled. How could we give women the vote? What would be the point? They would only mimic the decision of their fathers or husbands."

He did not stop there, but continued on in a dry monologue about the errors of the suffragettes and their poor wayward stock.

Jack amused himself watching me eat my potato as though it had done me personal wrong until Irving interrupted his companion. "Your psychology or not, if you think a woman is, what'dya call it, 'helpless to succumb' to men, you never met my mother. Stubborn as a donkey that woman, bless her soul."

Edgington sniffed, "That, my dear Irving, is anecdotal evidence and simply has no place in good science. But you know, the paper I have been working on ties into this quite nicely, let me see if I could explain it…"

I realized, as he waxed on about his biology paper why I dislike him so much, apart from the obvious bend he had against women. He reminded me of my father. But in the worst way. Like a copy of a copy of a copy of Pellinore Warthrop. All the sneering self obsessiveness and haughtiness and none of the bite. Youngest whatever of the whatever though he might be, I had no doubt Pellinore Warthrop would eat him alive. Something I would have been glad to watch.

"Oh, Miss Sweeting, I can take that for you," Irving said in his hearty baritone while I carried Jack's black case across the common area to the one table lit by a porthole. Jack had asked me to clean its contents and I, of course, had readily agreed.

"I think I can manage," I said, "It isn't a long journey to the other side of the room."

Too bored by the voyage to give up so easily, he sat at the table across from me giving me a broad and toothy smile.

Before I could tell him flat out to leave me alone he said, "You off to the wonders of the America's backyard? You will adore the gowns they dream up down there, go all aflurry when the girls dance. You will be agog."

"I can barely draw breath in anticipation," I deadpanned, looking through the mess inside the bag rather than the man who sat across from me.

He laughed his big fruity laugh, "Not so much a dancer, eh? Me either. Two left feet on this one. What are the two of you doing down there then?"

"I'm sorry," I said, as Jack had instructed, "That is the business of Dr. Darling."

"You're bothering her, Reuben," came Edgington's nasally voice.

"Oh just keeping the girl company, Fritzy."

"Cleaning the good Master Darling's instruments I see, Miss Sweeting," Edgington continued, "You ought not polish that lancet just like that, allow me to show you."

I, who had been shown by Jack exactly how to polish his lancet, did not hand it over, "I am quite capable of caring for his instruments, thank you. It is, after all, my job."

"Oh, do allow me to assist you," Edgington said, straightening his spectacles, "Reuben here might have paws rather than hands, but I am quite accustomed to delicate instruments. After all, I am a doctor myself. Perhaps not a surgeon, but we biologist do use quite the array of tools. Do you know what a necropsy is?"

"I do," I said without interest, putting away the polished lancet drawing out a forceps whose hinge had come undone. He was altering my first hypothesis of him. Long winded and good at biology might have been the only things he had in common with my father. I was entirely unable to imagine Warthrop trying this desperately to flirt with a girl who clearly had a job to do.

"Oh, my dear, allow me to fix that for you, this happens sometimes, you know, to instruments such as these."

I bristled and did not move to put the forceps into Edgington's outstretched palm, "Yes, I know, I've fixed them before, I promise you I require no assistance, although I would appreciate a bit of table room."

"Of course, of course, perhaps we shall adjoin two of the tables and create a larger work space?"

I sighed in mock dejection, "Unfortunate that all the tables are bolted to the floor."

"It is quite ungentlemanly for Mr. Darling to task you with this rot," Irving said, "Young lady like you ought to be up on the decks, reading poetry and flirting with the sailors!"

"I am quite busy, gentlemen," I said, although I would have only minded a little if it were just Irving.

Edginton inclined his head in a bow, "Oh, my apologies, my dear, I meant you no trouble, only to offer my services. Please though, do allow me to help a bit." Unwelcomed he reached his hand toward the opening of the bag. I snapped the bag shut with a click moments before he could plunder it.

"The contents of this bag are the property of Doctor Darling, Mr. Edgington and you have no authority to them. Now, please, allow me to work."

Irving gave a fruity laugh and rose, "My pardon, Miss Sweeting, we shall of course leave you to your devices." His tone hardly ruffled me at all, the sound of a boy who had recognized the game being called off. It was Edgington who caused me to stiffen in my skin. When asked so boldly to leave, denied so outright helping, foulness flashed beneath the glass of his spectacles.

"There is no need to be rude, Miss Sweeting," he said, possessiveness dripping from his voice, "A young lady ought know her place."

Irving clapped a hand on his companion's shoulder, "Come on now, Fritzy, let's leave the girl to her task."

Edgington did turn away, but dark promise glittered in his eyes.

I felt less than threatened. Even if he caught me on my own with the worst of intent, it was difficult to suppose that after slitting the throat of a man eating wolf and sending a lieutenant of the Whyo's to an early grave, this little doctor would do much harm to me. And if he wanted to try anything while I was asleep, he'd have to make the attempt while I was a foot away from Jack Kearns.

So removed of my unlikable company, I began to work in earnest on the disaster of an instrument bag Jack had given me. Sometime last December it had become my job to care for it and it seemed that in my absence he had not resumed the task.

The forceps clicked back together with a pop and I set them aside, moving on to rewrap the bandage roll that had come undone and spread itself in a mess throughout the entire bag.

"Husband hunting was not precisely what I had in mind for sport on this adventure," Jack said from behind me as I sharpened his scalpel. He stepped around me and took the seat vacated by Mister Irving.

Under my breath I muttered, "If there's an adventure where you'd let me hunt the little doctor you can sign me up now."

He threw back his head laughing and kicked his feet up on the table, nearly knocking his equipment into my lap. His eyes glittered, "How is it that upstanding earnest Pellinore produced a creature such as you?"

I thought that the comment was meant to get under my skin, so I kept my hands steadily sharpening the scalpel, "I don't know if Pellinore had all that much to do with it."

"If not our renowned Monstrumologist than what?"

"Thirteen years in the slums of New York most likely," I said, not looking at him. I didn't have it in me to argue that the dangerous nights with an empty belly and city blocks filled with teeth had not taken something from me.

In a dark voice he said, "I had nearly forgotten your formative years marinating in the stink of human garbage."

"No you hadn't."

He laughed, "No. I hadn't." He crossed his arms over his chest, watching me tend to his bag. "You never did tell me why you cut down your tender mother."

I looked up at him and gave him a cavalier wink, "You show me yours, I'll show you mine."

Rather than answer me he said, "Did you know, Lee, that among a people of the Serengeti there is a method to flay a human alive in a single piece, beginning at the little finger?"

"Didn't know that," I said, recognizing his attempt to put me ill at ease,"Is that the foreshadowing of an upcoming lesson?"

An irritated crease formed between his brows, "No, you would have no stomach for it."

I looked up from my organizing with a gleeful grin, "Can't do it, huh?"

He narrowed his eyes and gave me an unhappy glower, "Never got a knack for it."

It was easier to succumb to Jack's ruthless tendencies now. I had known before, when we were in London, that I would have to go back eventually to Pellinore and Will. I had feared that if I let myself go too far into his rabbit hole Will would see me for what I was. But I had no illusions about that now. Their looks on the pier had been enough to convince me that they had an idea of what Jack was. It would not be hard for them to make the leap of intuition regarding what I had become alongside him. I doubted that Pellinore would even take me back after embarrassing him at the colloquium then slicing open his fingers.

Thirty minutes later, I finished fixing up his bag and clipped it shut, "Here you go, Jack, right as rain."

"That's my girl," he said lazily, looking out the porthole at the sun lowering on the watery horizon.

I looked through the porthole too, but I was not looking at the sunset, my eyes were drawn to the depths, painted pink and orange in the dying light, "Hey, Jack?" It was not a question that I had planned on asking, it was too soft and vulnerable. But I could not shake my dreamed up image of my father finding me on his doorstep a second time and slamming his door in my face, of Will standing behind him in tacit endorsement of my exile.

"Yes, Lee?"

I stuttered over it, "If..if we get this thing and...I mean if we...if I…" I swallowed and made myself speak now that I had started, "If we finish this hunt alive, can I come back to London with you?"

This stole his attention away from the sunset and he swept over me with his eyes, "You don't plan to return to your father?" He paused, "Or to Will?"

I would not go so far as to tell him my anxiety over the affections of Pellinore Warthrop, but I had prepared no other reasoning that I could, or was willing to, articulate. I had missed it though, while I had been at home, missed Jack. I had not yet entirely figured out the allure that he had for me.

But, even if Pellinore had welcomed me back into the house on Harrington Lane, what would he do if I said to him, 'Oh, you should know, the thug that I told you murdered my mother. I am that thug. It was the very knife I drew on you and threw against your wall, I put it through her stomach and then I put it through her throat and then while she was on the ground I put it through her eye.' He would not leave me alone with Will then. He'd shoot me on the spot, or slice me open in his basement.

When offered only protracted silence Jack said in nearly a whisper, "I would even allow you to choose your own drapes for your bedroom."

I smiled and looked myself out at the sun, which was now nearly invisible under the waves, "Your whole place could really use some work."

"Don't get cocky."

We sat across the table from each other until it was well and truly dark, soon enough the two other men would light lanterns to throw some sort of brightness into the cabin, but Jack and I were contented in the growing gloom.

We remained until late when Jack got to his feet and said, "I am going to sleep, do try not to wake me when you come in."

I nodded absently and continued to look out of the window. I could see nothing, there was only darkness out there now. I heard Jack cross the cabin and return to our stateroom, bringing his bag with him.

I sat brooding in the dark for a long time, well into the night. I was just thinking of getting off to bed when another voice came from the shadows. I had heard the tapping of his shoes as he approached, had smelled the grease that he used to slick his hair, "Do you need a lantern, Miss Sweeting?"

"No," I said without looking at Edgington.

"Have you ever been at sea before, Miss?"

"Yes, twice before." It unnerved me to trade such useless banter in the dark with him standing behind me.

"But have you seen the clarity of the stars on a night such as this, in the middle of the sea?"

I had not, at least not well, through narrow windows such as this that provided no good view at all, never on deck. However, this was not something I wanted to share with him. I said nothing. He continued, still standing at my back. This stole half of my attention from his words, listening for any sounds of him coming closer.

He laughed, a strained fake noise, "I am no astronomer, but if you like, I could show you. Come with me to the deck." He said it like a demand.

His friend Irving, only annoyed me. Certainly he flirted, but he was a social man, smart enough to keep himself clear of Jack and bored of the companion he had brought with him.

"I was just going off to bed," I said. I was certainly tired, but there also was a quality about Edgington that increased the appeal of being in a room that also contained Jack Kearns.

"Come now, it will be a treat, I'm sure Doctor Darling wouldn't mind."

I stood up. I turned to face him in the dark, I could not even see his outline, "Thank you, Mister Edgington, really, but I must retire."

He hand took my wrist in the dark, "Oh, come now, this is not something to miss, I know you would like to see it."

He had reached the end of my ability to act a lady, even if it meant disappointing Jack, I wrenched at my wrist, "You touch me again, ya shit licking cur, and I'll knock your head in so hard you see stars below deck."

As it happened, this was not an effective threat against a man such as Edgington. His gentlemanly demeanor fell off of him like a second skin. His grip on my wrist tightened and with no warning, being unable to see even a foot before me, the back of his hand smashed against my face, "When a man such as me offers you an invitation, you take it, you foul mouthed whore!"

I will not say that I did not decide to do it. There were other things that I could have done. I could have called for Jack, or kicked his shins. I could have just screamed. But he bit out that last word and bile rose up into my soul and I wanted him to bleed. I reacted as though he had drawn a revolver with that word. I could defend myself by saying that I only meant to wound, that it was dark and I could not see. But Jack had showed me how to do this and I did it. There was so much blood. He fell with a muffled thump, releasing my bruised wrist.

I did not drop beside him, nor check his pulse. My hands were coated with his blood and my new knife had been christened. I felt a wave of panic roll over me like arid heat. The added smell of his metallicy life almost made me swoon. My heart was rushing so much blood through my veins I could not force my brain to operate and I did the single thing that I could contrive to do.

I fled across the room in silent steps and went into our room. I smelled of blood and I knew it. It was on my hands. Regardless, unable to stop myself knelt by Jack's bed. Although my hands were tacky with blood, I shook him.

In a whisper that made me sound much younger than my fifteen years I hissed, "Jack! Jack, wake up."

He murmured unhappily, "What is it, Lee? I told you not to-"

"I need you."

He touched my hand in the dark and recoiled, "Lee!" He hissed sharply, "What -"

"I didn't mean to!" I hissed lamely.

He swore under his breath, "For god's sake, Lee, _here_?" Then he laughed softly, "Did I not tell you that we were not husband hunting this trip? Where is poor Edgington?"

"In the common cabin." My voice shook.

He swing his legs off the side of the bed, "Alright, Lee. What do we need to do?"

"What?"

"This is your mess, Lee. What do we need to do?"

I took a few breaths, "Oh...alright. Clean off the blood and get rid of the body?"

"Good, how do we get rid of the body?"

"Drop him overboard."

"Good girl."

"Alright," he said, "I will fetch water, you need to go to his rooms and fetch his blanket, can you do that?"

"Yes," I said.

"I will get water and meet you, do be quiet."

With less than a sound he disappeared into the night. I got up after him and slid back out the door. I knew, luckily, which of the other two rooms was Edgington's. More lucky still that the two men had separate staterooms and did not bunk together like Jack and I. His door was unlocked and I crept inside, fetching the man's blanket from his bed.

Jack had farther to go and I felt that, after I had returned to the common cabin, I waited at the dead man's side for an eternity. Finally he returned to me, bucket of water with him.

"I can't take him to the deck," I said, "He's too heavy for me."

In the dark, Jack ruffled my hair, "I will take care of him, clean up the blood. Did it get on your clothes?"

"No, you told me that it would spurt, I remembered."

"Good girl," he wrapped the blanket around the body and lifted it, disappearing again. I set to cleaning the blood off of the floor. A few minutes later I thought that I heard a faint splash and then Jack returned. For this, he lit a lamp, that we might make sure I had scrubbed the floors clean. But by the end of it, I was coated in blood to the elbows. My whole body shook. It was not only this, which would have been enough. It was a compounding of all three of my murders. I felt through my core that without the first two, this last would not have occurred.

Jack pulled me to my feet and extinguished the lamp, "That is enough, Lee, come, we have to clean you up." He was only wearing the trousers he had pulled on under his nightshirt. Then I remembered that I had left bloody handprints on that nightshirt. He must have disposed of it with the body. He took me up onto the deck, pausing to make sure the skeleton crew that sailed during the late hours would not see us. He poured out the water across my arms, holding them over the side of the deck. Edgington was down there somewhere. Jack's careful fingers rubbed every blur of redness from my skin until I was clean once more.

The stars really were incredible out here.

My whole body trembled by the time he had led me back to our bunks. I fell upon mine fully clothed.

With more gentleness than I would have thought him capable of, he unlaced my boots and pulled them off, putting them beneath my bunk where they belonged. He whispered, "You have until morning, then you must be convincingly innocent."

"I'm sorry, Jack," I whispered in nothing louder than a breath.

"You're sorry?" He asked, although he sounded amused, "For killing someone? What have I done to lead you to believe you must apologize to me for something as trivial as that?"

"Well," I amended, "For killing him here."

He laid down in his own bunk, "There are certainly more opportune locations you might have chosen."

I was laying on my stomach, my right arm hanging down off the side of the bunk, fingers trailing on the floor, "He grabbed me by the wrist in the dark, he called me a whore."

He gave a sarcastic chuckle, "Well then whatever else could you have done. It isn't as though he were barely ten stone and you are a practiced boxer, not to mention that I was merely a shout away. No you obviously had to cut him down ten feet from his companion on a ship full of witnesses." His words were cutting and sharp in reprimand, but belaying their tone Jack's fingers reached out in the dark and wrapped around my own.

That is, I think, what did it. What finally cleaved me irrevocably to Dr. John Kearns. Not the moonlit lessons nor unquestioning aid when I laid a man low. It was the fingers in the dark. And it would be mere hours before that newly formed loyalty would be put to use. I am certain that only someone such as Jack Kearns would have timing like that. Offering up that uncharacteristic hand around my fingers just hours before he would need me to give him everything that I had.

I will never know if I would have been able to feign my innocence by the morning or not, nor what Jack would have done if I had been found out. In reality, I ought to have seen it coming. I had given over my life for the thrill of hunting monsters, they had found me again and again. Did I not think that they would also live in the sea? I have always believed that it was Edington's smell that brought it, coming up from the depths with the sharks to feast on his skinny frame.

Morning was just coming up when the ship seized so violently that I was wrenched from my fitful sleep. I was awake for a few moments before Jack was.

"Jack!" I called, this time at full volume.

He leapt up, shoving on his boots and slipping a shirt over his head. His long hair was rumpled and tangled. I shoved my feet back into my boots as well.

He had taken a single step toward the door to our stateroom when the wooden outer wall of the ship that made up the furthest wall of our room was wrent violently asunder in a cataclysmic roar of noise. We were not positioned so that we sat, like the hold, entirely underwater. But that did not stop plenty of water crashing in atop us. Although not water alone.

A slimy blue green tentacle squirmed lurched into the hole it had just created. It thrashed at the end, feeling us out. Faster than I could mark, it shot at Jack. Suckered, thicker than my arm, it twisted around his ankle and wrenched him toward the ocean. There was a terrible crack when he fell and I saw his head snap against the floor of the ship.

I didn't think about doing it or not doing it. There was, of course, no time for analysis, only action. I saw Jack whipped away and struck. My old knife was in my fingers then it was not, flying end over end toward the tentacle. It struck home, burying itself deep into the rubbery flesh. The tentacle released Jack at once, writhing back into the sea.

Jack was half in and half out of the ship, bent backwards over the broken ship wall, water coursing over him. His body was limp and red stained the water around his head.

My own blood was pouring through my veins in a riotous rush. Fear, as I had long come to expect, did not show her face. My brain worked in fevery details, somehow reaching far out into what needed doing.

I had seen the coil of rope in his case every day when he opened it to retrieve fresh clothing. I slid the case from its water soaked spot under the bed and flung it open, damning his fine clothing to a watery grave. A rucksack was in there, laying in wait for the Colombian jungle. I almost forsook it, after all, Jack was bleeding behind me lying as temptingly easy prey for the tentacled thing that assaulted us.

My brain slid back into functionality, lecturing at me in Jack's voice, ' _What will happen after the ship goes down, Lee?'_

I answered out loud, under my breath, while I stuffed the rucksack "There'll be a lifeboat, right? We'll get on that." I filled the rucksack with most of the rope, cutting some off for now, a canteen of water, his revolver, rounds. The ship lurched again and I heard the deafening crunch of wood.

' _And what about me, sweetheart? If you hadn't notice, I am wounded.'_ I abandoned the rest of his case and dumped the entire contents of his medical case into the bag, then flung it over my shoulders. Then I saw to Jack.

He was unconscious and bleeding from the head. An unlucky accident at an even more unlucky time. Maybe he would have left me, but I did not leave him. I squatted beside him and wrapped his arms around me. Right arm over my right shoulder and down. Left arm under my own left arm and up. Lift with my shoulders he had said. I used my bit of rope to bind his wrists together, tying him to me. I tore his knife from his calf and drew my own, one for each hand.

I would have to hope that his wound was not fatal and that I wasn't dragging a corpse. I am not certain how I found the strength for it, only that iron was slipping through my blood and my muscles seemed more capable than I had ever found them. I had lashed him to me tightly, so his lolling head was near to mine. I could feel his breath on my cheek and was driven forward.

Too much water was in the cabin and less and less of the hole in the wall remained unsubmerged. ' _If you let me go underwater I will drown.'_

"I know, Jack, I know. Don't worry, I've got you." I said this in a constant litany to bolster myself more than him who was still out and pulled myself out of the ship and into open water. Knife in each hand I slammed them into the side of the ship, wrenching one after another out that I might pull myself sideways, half in and half out of the water. Jack's dead weight dragged me backward, but I clung to the blades with mad furiosity.

I could do nothing about the sea beast except try to keep it at bay if it struck us again. I could hear the screams of others and the rending of wood. I hoped that it could devour enough sailors to satisfy it and leave Jack and I alone. I was still a few minutes from knowing that the tentacled cryptid was not the only monster in the water.

I could feel the ship slipping beneath and was forced to pull myself up hand over hand with my knife pitons up the side of the ship. My breath was so ragged it hurt to inhale and sea water, salty and terrible, slipped into my mouth in great gulps. But it was above me, hanging tempting as Tantalus' fruit. A lifeboat.

My world narrowed entirely to that single goal. Drag my body, which carried Jack's body and ten pounds of equipment, upwards toward that boat. I made it only because the ship turned with me, buoying half of Jack's limp weight as I climbed. When I was level with the boat I flung myself backwards, landing awkwardly atop Jack in the boat. I sliced him free of me, letting him lay in the bottom of the boat. I leapt up and cutting through the ropes holding the boat to the dying ship.

It fell the three feet that was all that separated it now from the ocean. I fell upon Jack then, tearing bandage to quell the bleeding from his head. I was afraid he'd cracked his skull and I also thought he needed stitches. But not now. Just stop the bleeding now. I wrapped him in bandage and the bleeding was somewhat subdued. Then I took stock.

With the ship's resident monster hunter busy being cared for by its resident monster hunter in training, the crew had been the ones to besiege the creature. I saw now the long swathes of the ship that appeared crushed by long seeking tentacles. The bodies that floated in the water. But the sailors had not been helpless. Some of them had been whalers and were well versed in the use of harpoons. The water was red, but I did not see the monster. Whether it had been killed and sank beneath or had fled, I did not know. I knew only that sharks were churning the bloody water and men thrashed among the ship's wreckage. This, it seemed, was the only life boat that had not been destroyed.

The men may have killed the monster that was stupid enough to let its nature be known. But another monster had just climbed aboard a lifeboat. Coldness rose up under my ribs to match the coldness left by the water. Always think about where you are, Jack had said. I did think of it. We were somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. We were a long way from land. The boat had only a set of oars, no sail to bring it anywhere with any more speed than being buoyed on the waves. I knew little of the ocean, but I saw stretched out before me many days on the waves.

Of course, one might be forgiven for my course of action if one were pushed there by the trauma of starvation. If one were devolved from the higher order of animals onto which humans had placed themselves out of hunger. But I was only human enough to know what came next. To foresee days or weeks on this boat which had only oars and no way of returning to land on its own power.

I had no obligation to these people. Let them die. I wanted life only for myself. And for Jack. But I was not kind enough to abandon them for the sharks. I would need them after all.

I hesitated not at all. I pulled Jack into a sitting position against the side of the boat, so his head was above his heart, then turned to the rucksack. I tore out the rope, portioned it into pieces. Then the right bottle from the medical kit. Carefully, I folded a strip of bandage into a hand sized cloth.

I went hunting in the truest sense of the word.

The ship was nearly out of sight now, only the prow peaking upward, and I, the siren, closing in. Irving was desperately treading water just before me.

"Swim here!" I called to him, my voice girlish and high. I rowed toward him and his face was alight with relief.

"Oh, thank mother Mary," He said, pulling himself up onto the boat. "Miss Sweeting you are a gift from heaven itself."

I struck when he was halfway on. Cloth over the mouth and nose, other hand holding it against his face. He struggled for a moment and then collapsed as I had in that alley. I dragged him over and selected three pieces of rope. One for his wrists, behind his back. One for his ankles, stripped of boots. The last around his throat, and to the side of the boat furthest from Jack.

"Help me!" A sailor cried out, seeing me and my boat in the morning light.

"Hold on," I called, making my voice sweet. I rowed to him, he swimming part way. "Oh, climb on, good man, there you go." I said, touching him gently in the water. He scampered up. My hands flashed out with the chloroform and he was added to my stock.

I rowed through the debris for a moment more, looking for another. There was room still for one more before they were too close to Jack's end. "Help me! Someone! Is anyone alive out there?" I called out. I let sobbing cut into my voice. If Pellinore cut me apart with his scalpel, what would he find?

"Don't worry, Miss, come over this way" A young sailor yelled. He was half on and half off a broken piece of ship.

"Oh thank the good lord!" I sang out, going to him. He completed my work.

They had seen me as a girl in need of help or as an angel or mercy swooping down upon them, I neither knew which nor cared for the distinction.

I rowed until I was away from the bloody water, until _The Explorer_ had disappeared beneath the waves of red waves.

Then I saw to Jack. Gently, I unwound his head. I drew out the floss and needle from my rucksack and did as he had in the country house in France. I was not nearly as neat as he had been for me, but I shut the wound. There was salve in a tin that fought infection. I smeared that on the wound then bound it again with the bandage.

I took out the revolver. It had to be dried and cleaned. It had not been submerged, thankfully, and I hoped the powder was not wet. I disassembled it as Jack had taught me, drying each piece, then put it back together. I had lost my little knife, but I put my new one back into my sheath, Jack's larger one on my belt. I gagged my captives before they woke.

There was more that I had to do. I had been on the deck during high noon more than once. I knew the power of this sun. I needed to see to that before it got too hot. The only fabric I had was the shirts off the backs of my captives, which I took for myself without hesitation. I tore them, tattering their edges into strips and weaving them into a single large piece of fabric.

With this and the remaining rope, I created a canopy over Jack to shield him from the coming sun. Too often, as the morning rose to day, did I check his pulse and feel for his breathing against my hand. But that was my only distraction from waiting. All I could really do was hope that he would eventually open his eyes.

My victims woke before he did, coming to groggy and bathed in sunlight. They thrashed at their ropes, but my knots held. They snarled at me, alternatingly pleading and vengeful. But I contained neither mercy nor fear. I showed them my gun and they settled among each other.

It was almost evening on the first day when Jack's eyes finally blinked open. His hair hung lank around his face. Its bath in the saltwater made its regular waves curl into strandy curls.

"Lee?" He asked in a cracked voice.

"Jack!" I said, crouching next to him immediately, "You're awake."

"Where the hell are we? What happened?" I was happy to hear the slurred quality of his voice dissipating as he spoke.

"The ship went down, we're on a lifeboat. There was some kind of monster that attacked us, big tentacles. Do you remember?"

He grimaced, "Ah, yes, I do." A crooked smile formed on his lips as he became more alert, "Did you rescue me, Lee?"

"...Yeah."

He reached up and felt the bandages on his head, "And you stitched me up? I certainly am a good teacher."

"Brought a rucksack too, medical supplies, a little water."

He smiled faintly and gestured at our guests saying in his still struggling voice, "But do tell me, why do we have sailors tethered on the other side of the boat?"

I hesitated for a moment, then said, "We are a long way from land, Jack. We don't even have a sail. It could be...weeks."

He looked at them, then back at me. Slow laughter bubbled up from his throat and he smiled. It was no sunny toothy smile of distraction, this smile was all Jack. He reached up and laid his hand against my cheek, in a tender voice he said, "Oh, that's my girl."

Jack was up and moving around within the day. He took stock of the provisions that I had brought with me out of the cabin, approving of my choices, though despairing that I'd left his rifle behind.

He sat down alongside me under the canopy. Sunburn was already marring the skin of the other men and their lips were cracked. Jack and I had taken turns sipping at the water. He pulled me close, his arm around my shoulders, that he might whisper in my ear.

"Meat will rot in only a few days, they will need to be kept alive."

"They will need water, and a little sustenance to keep them going then," I said in a tone as soft as his.

He nodded, "Also, I might add, a human man would have over a hundred pounds of consumable flesh, that is much waste between the two of us."

I didn't hesitate now. This time it wasn't that they weren't people, it was that it no longer mattered that they were. What, really, was the difference between this and slaughtering a pig? "Is there any way to...harvest some of them without killing them?"

He tapped my nose with affection. Affection that I know felt might be genuine, "Why, my darling girl, did I never tell you that I was a trauma surgeon? Amputations were my speciality."

This did not cause revulsion to rise in my stomach, just gladness that he was here, that he had woken up. I laid my head against his shoulder. I had not let myself sleep while he had been out, afraid of an uprising if both of us were dead to the world. In the last twenty four hours, I had gotten maybe three hours of sleep between murdering a man, saving Jack from a sea monster, hauling him up the side of a ship, and capturing enough food for survival. I had kept going, I think, only from the adrenaline that had run thicker than blood in my veins. Now that Jack was awake and seemed himself, I began to flag.

"Have you slept since _The Explorer_?" He asked me.

"No," I murmured, burying my face into his chest to try to block out the light.

"You must be exhausted."

I nodded vaguely.

"Give me the revolver, and my knife."

I roused myself enough to hand over his weapons. He took them then situated himself so he leaned against the prow of the boat. One of his arms was at his side, hand holding the revolver. The other encircled me, pulling me to lay against his chest, "So, sleep."

I did.

I do not mean to give the impression that I had set us up for comfort on this boat. We had only a canteen of fresh water. That lasted only two days. After that we had only the blood of our captives. Jack and I did this together. His bag had had a syringe in it which we used to draw out blood without causing too much damage. He, being the expert, wielded in instrument, I stood behind him, gun drawn on his victim.

Blood will suffice to keep you alive, it has, of course, both water and substance. But it is not ideal, and it turns the stomach. He was very careful to only allow us small sips at a time. It never gave us enough to truly quench the thirst that became a never ending thing. We did not have enough left in our mouths to ever wash out its taste either. We tasted blood at every hour of the day and night.

I had no way to see myself, but I saw my own reflection in Jack. Unbandaged now, after nearly so long at sea, foul hair tied back out his gaunt face. The raw meat too, we could only eat so much of before becoming sick. So together we withered to flesh spread over bones. His cheekbones stood out and purple circles grew beneath his eyes. His skin became dusky with the sun, face wind chapped and raw, stubble growing out into an untamed beard. And those lips that stretched over that maw.

Chapped lips eternally coated in blood. Teeth stained red.

We did not talk usually. We harvested our food and our drink and we sat next to each other under our canopy. We slept in shifts. A cycle between his hand on the revolver, cradling me to his chest, and the reverse.

Any remaining fear I had for Jack dissipated with our first long bone, a humerus. Stripped of its flesh he cracked it over his knee and splintered it open. For a long time he stared down at its contents, seemingly unable to move. Then he crouched beside me and scraped the marrow out of the sundered bone with his finger. This he fed to me saying in a whisper with his cracked voice, "This won't make you sick, eat up."

I have a hard time keeping the events of our bloody voyage in the correct order. It all blurred. At what point did we feast, regardless of the threat of illness, when one of our charges got loose from his bonds and tried to cast himself to sea? Was that before or after my sunblindess? I stared too long at the water that glistened with the light. Jack dipped rags in sea water and bound my eyes.

"Don't worry, poppy," he had said, "It will come back."

It must have been after, it was not until the midpoint of our voyage that he started calling me 'poppy.' When we were freshly fed and had as much energy as we ever did he would grin at me sometimes and snap his red teeth playfully, "I shall take you to Africa sometime and introduce you to our kin."

Our stock of meat did not last forever. There came a day when we were alone on the boat, although we had felt alone for most of the trip. The moment we realized I will not forget, it comes back to me clearly through the haze of that trip.

He sat beside me, teeth clamped together. I knew what he was thinking about. No more meat. I watching his eyes travel down my emaciated body, stopping at the hilt that stuck out of my boot. Seeing where his eyes had landed, I drew it out and his eyes flickered up to mine, his fingers wrapping around the handle of his own knife and pulling it from his calf.

For a long time we stared at each other, each of us holding a knife in one hand, our other arms still wrapped about each other.

He let out a humorless chuckle and dropped his blade over the side of the boat. Mine followed after it, the revolver after that. Everything, in fact, that we could use to slit each other's throats was sunk to the bottom of the sea.

Now free to spread out over the boat, we lay that night head's beside each other. He laying one way, with his feet toward the stern, me the other, my feet toward the prow. For hours we stared at the stars above us.

It must have been passed midnight when he spoke, "I do not think I ever told you, Lee, that I killed my mother too."

I turned my head to look at him and waited.

After awhile, he carried on, "She sent me to an asylum when I was seventeen. I escaped and pushed her down the stairs. Oh, Lee, to hear her spine splinter," he groaned in reminiscence.

"Why'd she send you to an asylum?"

"You know why." I did.

I did not press him, "My mother tried to sell me to a lieutenant of the Whyo's," I said, in answer to his story.

Now he turned his head and regarded me, "Whatever does that mean?"

"Well, tried to sell my uh...innocence."

A crackling spark of violent loathing split his face for less than a moment, "Go on."

I did, I had never told this story to anyone, "I was just a kid, I was eleven. He was so big, Jack. Enormous. Face had this wet grin. He was busy with his trousers, he had a knife. I just…"

His voice carried over me in whispers, "it felt like something else living beneath your skin, it overtook any morals you had been taught."

I nodded to him.

"Morals don't exist, Lee," he said in his raspy thirsty voice, "Only the moment."

"Then why am I alive? You could have killed me for the meat on my bones."

He scoffed, "You are barely a mouthful. But you were telling me about your mother."

She saw the Whyo dead and I was covered in blood, head to to, Jack. She came at me with a kitchen knife. I could have run, but I was so…I was so…"

He reached up and laid his hand against the side of my face, "I know."

Unconsciousness came soon after that, for us both. I thought that it was the end. The sun. The occasional awareness of Jack's breath. The thirst. And then nothing.

They came, not realizing what they had found. They tilted water into my mouth, which woke me but I did not have anything left to startle over. They lifted me up first, a fragile thing, into strong arms. The last of my energy, I pushed away, "Jack!" I said. Tried to say, rasped.

"Don't worry, you poor thing, we've got him too," the man said who had me in his arms.

When I became entirely awake I was on a ship's bed in a medical bay. Jack was in the bed next to me. His head was turned to face me and a small grin played over his chapped lips. He had been cleaned up, no longer smeared with blood. His hair, which had been so dirty it had looked nearly brown, was back to blonde, although it had not yet regained its luster.

"Welcome back, Lee," he said. His voice was still hoarse, "I do believe we have made it."

I grinned back, "Hey, Jack."

The ship that had picked us up was called _The Aspiration_ was bound for London. Jack had ruled that our expedition to the wilds of Columbia was to wait until we were both returned to our full strength. This was something I heartily endorsed.

It took us all the way back to England before either one of us could eat full meals without losing them, or stay awake for longer than a few hours. The occupants of our rescue ship must have known what we did. We were covered in the remnants of our meals. But if they did, they said nothing, perhaps allowing us the privilege of trust that we had let them die first, before devouring them.

However, the crew did not speak to us unless it was absolutely required. Jack no longer had the use of charismatic smiles and cheeky winks to hide what lay beneath. Nor, or course, did I. They grew more nervous around us each passing day. By the end of the journey, when London was in sight, they could not stand to be near us, nor to look us in the eye.

I stood on the prow of the ship as we came into port, my limbs shook with anticipation to be back on land, and to eat something that was not ship's rations. Jack stood at my side, when had he not been at my side since the very beginning of this ordeal? He looked out at the London docks with hunger, mouth slightly agape. He had not yet returned to his former elegance. There had been a time that I had thought of him as a dirk inlaid with filigree gold and set with glimmering gems. He was this no longer, but a prison shiv instead.

We fled from the ship with not a word of farewell or thanks when it landed. The crew did not attempt to arrest our departure. Jack seized me by the emaciated wrist to tug me faster along the London streets. We were, of course, divested of any sort of money for a cab and far too shabby in appearance for a cabbie to trust that there might be money waiting for them at our destination.

Ten minutes into our journey, and none too close to his house, we both began to flag. His rapid pace had dropped to a drag and his breath quickened to match my own.

"Jack, can we rest?" I asked. Because I felt that my legs would not last me twenty more steps.

"Yes," He said. He sat down heavily on a park bench and I after him. He had neither trimmed his hair nor cut his rough beard since we were picked up. I thought that perhaps he wanted to do it privately in his own home. As it was, although he was mostly clean, he looked quite destitute. I am sure I looked no better.

We sat long enough to catch our breath, then I stood shakily to my feet, "Come on, Jack."

We carried on. Stepping up onto curbs, then long trails across pavement, down onto a street, across the street, back onto a curb. It became a Sisyphean task. Every bench we crossed we stopped to catch our breath.

When we were halfway there I could barely lift my feet off the ground. Were I alone, I would not have. But I couldn't just sit down if Jack was still going, although atrophied muscles were barely up to the task of keeping me upright.

At last, when it was nearly evening although we had come to port in early afternoon, we were on his street, then up his steps to the door.

I waited expectantly but Jack just stood there. His face was tight with indignation and fury and he slammed his hand open palmed against the door. Through gritted teeth he said, "I do not have the key."

I laughed without mirth, "I guess you don't have a lock pick set then either."

He sneered at me, "No, I do not."

"Gimme your shirt," I said.

He wrinkled his face in confusion.

"After all this, you can't trust me? Gimme your shirt." Neither of us had jackets and I could not very well strip off my own on a London street.

He shrugged and pulled off his threadbare shirt, revealing his torso that displayed each of his ribs. I wound it about my hand and, without preamble, smashed my hand through the window that ran alongside the door. I reached through the broken frame and flipped the lock to the door.

We nearly pelted inside, falling down on the familiar carpet in glee. We had intended, of course, to clean ourselves up and make a proper meal. But our energy had been sapped on the return journey and once lying on his carpet with our arms thrown over each other neither of us had the strength to move.

A manic grin spread over Jack's face, an answering grin creeping over mine. He gave me an imitation of one of his cavalier winks and said, "Welcome home, Lee."


	5. Homeward Bound

**Chapter 5: Homeward Bound**

We didn't spend the entire night on the floor. We woke up after a few hours of rest and dragged ourselves to our feet.

For the first time in months, we separated, he going to the watercloset off the master bedroom, me to the guest one down the hall from my bedroom. I stripped off my foul clothing and sank into a merciful bath. The muscles I had earned had melted off of my body. My thighs no longer touched each other, even with my feet together. Like Jack, I could count my ribs.

I cleaned all the salt and dirt from my body and got up, wrapping myself in a plush towel. I was not sure if I had ever felt something so fine on my skin. I returned to my room and remembered belatedly that I did not have any clothing in Jack's house.

I thought little of my lack of modestly. There was hardly anything human left of my body, and it wasn't as though we had had much on a small boat in the ocean. Wrapped in my towel, I knocked on his door. "Jack?"

"Hm?" he asked, opening the door. He was bathed too, and shaved of his beard. Without it he looked like a corpse.

"I don't have any clothes here."

He turned without a word and pulled a nightshirt from his chest of drawers and handed it to me. I took it and returned to my room. Before I dressed I stood for a long time on the hardwood floor, half a foot from the mirror. I tried to ready myself for what I would see when I turned to it. I thought of Jack's harrowing eyes sunken in and his bones that stuck out at all of his angles.

I turned to it finally, and recoiled. The thing that looked back on me what not human. I thought of the burgeoning girl that I had been, pretty and fair, hair dark and tousled. The wide eyed damsel who had lured her prey into her maw. I looked now upon the second half of the story. When the soft cheeked illusion was cast aside and the siren bared her fangs.

' _Note its vaguely hominid appearance, Will Henry. But do not be fooled. Although this thing before us might mimic the vocal registry of a homo sapien female its temperament is far removed._

My hair, wet and limp, was a tangled and broken nest. It had been soft. It was dull now, and brittle, it felt rough to the touch. Beneath this ragged wreckage a monster's face looked out. Blackish purple smears beneath dead eyes. My long chapped lips were covered in scabs that gave me the look of a ghoul. I bit at those lips viciously until blood seeped from their now open wounds. I smeared the blood over my teeth and looked upon my truest form.

' _Hand me the scalpel, Will Henry, snap to. We must decipher the contents of its stomach. They feed on human flesh, either living or scavenged. Like the Koala and their Eucalyptus leaf their prey is its only source of hydration, this is done both through the ingestion of raw flesh and by imbibing the blood directly.' .em_

My skin was raw and thick, hardened by salt spray, the eternal wind, and the cyclical sun. The tan coloring that had risen with the sun warred with starvation's sickly pale until I appeared a dirty gray. That hard skin stretched taught over my clavicle and danced in hills and valleys over my ribs. My hips and my knees jutted out in sharp and bulbous mounds, the body between them skeletal.

The ground under me felt too steady and on it I felt myself swaying. I turned away from the mirror and pulled Jack's nightshirt over myself. I slid my feet across the floor and fell into my bed. Its plush comfort was foreign to me entirely. The feeling of satin sheets against my sordid skin. The down mattress cushioning this body. Where was my wooden den that swayed in the sea? Or the chilly table where I was doomed to lie?

I could not bear it. Could not stand to be piled under soft quilts with my head resting on this tender pillow. It was the place for a sweet child, where she might be kissed on the forehead and asked if she would like the door to remain open a crack. So the light from the hall jets might frighten away the monsters.

Was that not the rule that every child seemed to know? That monsters do not belong under blankets? I toppled myself out of the bed and clawed my way beneath it, laying on my side on the unforgiving wooden floor. Tears did not come, but my body quaked. Unforgivably, I had the audacity to wish that I was home. Belatedly I thought of my wish in the copse of trees when Jack had aimed his gun at the cabbie. I had wanted Pellinore Warthrop to be the sort of father who stood between me and men such as that.

Had he not tried? He had asked me about school, and my friends. He had tried to ask my teachers how to help me. He had wanted to hold me back on the pier and keep me at his side, rather than John Kearns'. And in all of these things I had rebuked him. Why was it that I was doomed not to see what I had until it was snatched away? Had I really run because he would not take me into the field? I had been a child then and I ran for a child's reason, though not so much older, I had come back a monster instead. He had given me a bedroom with a view and I had crawled my way, bloody, into his dungeon pit.

That was where I slept, hidden under the bed, shivering.

When I woke up, I was not where I had put myself. I was back in my bed, wrapped in my covers with my head resting on my pillow. That is not why I had woken. Sun poured through my drapes and the heady scent of food wafted up through the gap beneath my door. I was on my feet and heading toward it before I had decided to move. I was not yet a thing of rational thought.

Jack was in the dining room, the table laden with a feast for kings. He wore his old clothes, but they hung off of him, a costume created for someone else. He bared his teeth to me, "I had it brought in. Come now, Lee, eat up."

The last time he had said that he had been feeding me human bone marrow.

But I sat alongside him before the buffet. We ate with neither dignity nor civility. We devoured the offering without words until Jack sat back, his teeth gritted.

I gave him a queasy smile, "You too?"

He nodded, lips pressed together. We abandoned the table and laid down in the sitting room, him draped over a sofa, and me across a divan. Our stomachs were distended from our gorging. We both lay in silence, trying not to be sick. After only a moment of respite Jack leapt to his feet and stalked swiftly out of the room. He came back much slower, a few minutes later. He collapsed back onto his sofa, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

Although I had just woken up, I slept again, and so did he.

It seemed to take a very long time for my human camouflage to begin to take hold again. But Jack had decreed that we were not to be out and about until we had begun to somewhat mend. Both of us slept alot, for hours in the middle of the day. Our bodies, it seemed, could not yet keep themselves upright for an entire day.

Toward Jack, I felt simultaneously bound and repulsed. Sometimes when I looked at him, I was startled that his teeth were white once more. We did not speak so much. But if I fell asleep in one room, I would wake up and he would be asleep somewhere nearby. Out of reach, but close enough to see. This was no one sided arrangement. If I came upon him sprawled out upon a couch or curled before the fire, for we were always cold, I could hardly help but find a place to settle in.

I had existed for too long adjacent to his breath to abandon it now.

Most of the time, Jack was the thing that he had once only rarely shown himself to be. Empty of feeling, face devoid of all expression.

It was March when we were returned to London. A handful of days on _The Explorer_ two weeks on _The Aspiration_ , five months on that boat.

In May, stronger now, but nothing to what we were, we lay beside each other in front of a roaring fire. We did not touch. More than a foot of floor separated us from each other. This time it was me who had laid down first. Jack had come in and seen me. He had brought me a quilt and a pillow, then, similarly outfitted joined me on the floor.

I watched his eyes flutter closed and spoke before he could tumble into sleep, "Jack?" It was the first thing either of us had said aloud in weeks.

He turned his head toward me and opened his eyes, but he didn't say anything.

I didn't know how to articulate what I wanted to know.

He didn't close his eyes, just kept looking at me. Finally, lips moving silently for a few moments before he attached words to his movements he said, "We made the papers you know."

I stiffened under my blanket and looked back at him.

He quoted, pausing occasionally to catch his breath, "' _A ship out of New York City,_ The Explorer _went down in the Atlantic Ocean, bound for Colombia. A single survivor was rescued, a sailor Marcus Havorford who floated for three days on wreckage before being found. Although authorities suspect nothing out of the ordinary, interviews with Havorford give his retelling. The brave sailor, who no doubt suffered greatly at the hands of exposure, reports the ship being dragged to the depths by a tentacled monster of unimaginable girth and, more ominous still, he recalls in the aftermath, the harrowing singing of a young woman in the bloodied waters.'_ " It was more than he had said combined since we got back. He looked at me and he looked at me. There was more in his eyes than he had allowed in months, then he said, "You sang?"

"No," I answered, "But I lured them. Called out. I asked for help."

His hand shot out of his blanket. It stilled while it was still closer to his face than mine. Then he extended it tentatively. His small bones and tendons still stuck out too much. The hand that had fed me. I had seen that hand covered in blood more often than I had seen it clean. He took a lock of my hair between his fingers and tugged it softly, "You have always been exceptional bait."

I rolled onto my back, looking up at the ceiling, "I am a siren, Jack."

He shrugged in his blanket, "You were hungry."

"Not when I...baited them."

He turned, so a different side of him would be toasted by the fire, "Anthropophagi, poppies ," he added to answer my grunt of confusion, "do not wait until they are starving to hunt. They just hunt."

I turned to look at him. Hearing the rustle he turned too, charcoal eyes looking at me. Playfully, I snapped my teeth.

To another, his responding bared teeth and soft snarl might have been a threat. But I took it for what it was.

I left Jack's house early in the morning in June. I was meaty enough by then to be seen outside and he had had women's clothing ordered for me so I drew no attention to myself. I couldn't stop thinking of it as Jack's house, although he had as good as said that I could stay there as long as I wanted. It wasn't our house because it wasn't my house. My house was on Harrington Lane.

The spring morning was still cool and I enjoyed the walk to the old man's house. I didn't know his name, but I had paid him to let me use his address for letters. It was where Will had always written me, I needed to know if something waited for me. When I knocked on the door he peered through the spy hole at me then slid a thin envelope under the door. My heart skipped. I slid a full pound back. I had enough and I needed to keep him loyal.

I didn't have the self restraint to do anything but sit on the stoop and read it right there.

 _Anna,_

 _The Doctor says you're dead. The ship went down and he says that you're dead at the bottom of the ocean. You promised Anna. You promised. You can't die. You aren't allowed. I won't allow it. Anna. Warthrop is wrong. You have to be alive because you promised to be alive. Please write me. Please tell me that you are alive. Please. I have to hear it. I know you're dead. I just have to tell someone now. You gave me a year of having someone to tell and I cannot give it up. You're sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Warthrop says you would have frozen before you starved. Fuck. Fuck Anna. I am so angry that you left. I am so angry. The only thing that doesn't make me angry is that Kearns is dead too. I hope that he survived long enough to know that he was going to die. I hope that it wasn't quick. If it were me instead of the sea doing it it wouldn't be quick. Anna. I am so sick of this. How dare you, Anna. How dare you touch my scars in the basement and put your arms around me and then leave?_

 _We were going to go to Columbia for you. Then we heard. He didn't speak until we were at home. Then he went mad. I thought he was going to starve. He refused to eat. He threw books into the fire. Tore down shelves. Broke his instruments. He screamed that he was done with Monstrumology for it was clearly done with him. This did not last, of course. Of course he came back. But Anna how could you?_

 _with_

 _-Will_

The letter was filled with crossings out so thick I could not read what was beneath them. There were spots of blurred ink and for the first time, he had not signed with affection. My hands shook. I wanted to cry, but tears would not come. I folded the letter and put it into a pocket my dress. I stood up and walked to Jack's house.

I spent my walk back daydreaming of going home. Was my father really so upset that I was dead? I stopped in the middle of the street and passed a hand over my face. I had called him my father before. Many times. But this was the first time, now that he thought me a corpse sinking frozen into the sea, that the imposing figure of Pellinore Warthrop felt truly like my flesh and blood. And here was I, filled to the brim with blood, and unable to return home.

This was better. It was kinder. To have a tragic daughter lost at sea was a better thing to carry in one's heart that a cannibalistic monster made half of you. Was it not? Hadn't he given me enough that I could do him this one good thing? Hadn't Will? I did not even know how long ago he had sent the letter, it had borne no date. I might have been while I was still at sea. They might have stopped thinking about me already.

Jack tried to say something to me when I came inside but I hardly took notice of him. I went through the door, up the stairs and into my bedroom. I shut the door and fell heavily upon the bed.

I buried my head into my pillow and tried to imagine that if I looked up it would be a different bedroom that I would be lying in. I was still only fifteen, a monster though I might have been, I was a very young monster, and I wanted my father.

I had been lying there, unable to find the energy enough to even rise up off the bed. It came up on me in waves. I was desperate just to see them. Will and dad.

I sat up in bed in a rush. So then I would see them. I just had to make sure that they did not see me. Not New Jerusalem, it was too small. But they would be in New York in the fall for that Society colloquium.

All I'd have to do would be get in.

I rolled out of bed. I had work to do. I had to be ready to be on my own by October, because I didn't want to bring Jack for this. I got to my feet and went back downstairs. By now it was dark. Jack had taken to keeping the jets off in the hall and not lighting any lamps.

I padded down the the stairs in my stocking feet. I'd slipped out of my dress and into the soft trousers and shirt that I spent most of my time around the house in. I walked through the dark into the kitchen. The whole house was black. I knew where the food was kept by feel. There were still some scones left I thought, unless Jack had polished them off.

The dark was soothing, even if it would have been faster with a lamp. I pulled three scones out of the cupboard and sat on the counter, pulling my knees up to my chest. I started nibbling on my treat.

"Something _eating_ you, darling?" Jack said in my ear.

I didn't jump. I hadn't heard him, even I couldn't hear Jack when he didn't want to be heard. But there was some quality of a room that changed when he entered it. I was too practical, or as I thought rather hopefully now, too much like my father, not to assume it wasn't some sensation I detected without realizing it. A smell maybe.

"I'm leaving at the end of the summer, I'll be back."

He slid himself up on the other side of the counter, facing me. His hand touched mine in the dark, took one of my scones and retracted. I heard him start to speak a few times before he managed it, "Any sea travel involved in your adventure?"

"Yes."

"Send me a telegram when you get to the other side."

"Course I will, Jack."

I listened to him eat the rest of his scone and ate my own along with him.

After a long time in the silence I said, "I'll need a new knife."

He answered, "I will need a new revolver. And a new rifle."

"And a new medical kit."

"It is time to outfit ourselves again," he said

"I'll come back," I said abruptly, "From my trip I mean. I'm coming back. In November probably."

"Yes, you said that you were coming back." He waited but when I had nothing to say on this he added, "I've made you a key, if I am not here." Again he touched my hand in the dark, this time to press a key into my palm.

Jack did not escort me to the docks this time. I looked truly a lady now,. I boarded my large passenger boat, concealing the shaking of my fingers by clutching the handle of my new case. My breath came too fast getting on the ship. When I felt it sway under me I felt half like I was home and halfway like I was in the maw of a rotting beast.

I hid myself away in my private cabin for the duration of the trip. I spoke to no one, particularly no men. I took my meals in silence and refused to socialize.

In the intervening months some of my muscles had come back. I no longer looked starved but I had not yet reforged the taut controlled weapon that my body had once been. For now, this served me well. My shape was quite different than it had been before, I had soft curves now that were accentuated in my dress. My arms, free of their tight muscles looked petite and feminine. These things would be worked away when I returned, but for now they could only serve me well in looking like someone I was not.

The ship docked in New York exactly on schedule, six short days after I had boarded her. And I could sigh in relief as I left it for solid land. I was flooded with giddiness. In only a few days time I might see them again. Just one time. Then I would go back and let them think that I was dead. I only wanted to see them once.

The Colloquium was scheduled to begin in two days time. As soon as I had sent my telegram to Jack, that time I spent enjoying my home city as I never had. I was no longer a destitute street urchin. Police officers tipped their hats to me rather than grip their revolvers. I could visit museums and libraries. It was an entirely different city from this angle.

When the day arrived, not the dance, the speaking, I took a sidestreet to an alley by the old Opera House that I had once used to rip off my fine clothing and run away with Jack. It seemed from another life. More than that, many lifetimes ago, a different age entirely.

I had dressed differently for this day than for my others. A fine dark suit and sleek black shoes. I had bound down my beginnings of breasts until they lay flat on my chest, hidden by a vest and cravat. I bound my hair back as Jack usually did and put a bit of khol through my eyebrows to darken them. My cheeks were still gaunt enough that I looked like a rather pretty young man. I had not grown back into the same girl that I had been before the ordeal. It had happened on my threshold between woman and girl and I had come out of it looking dissimilar. I looked now like a jagged woman fashioned after a poorly constructed copy of what I had been. I shared with my father the quality of looking ghastly without enough nutrition. I looked like a young man who looked unsettlingly similar to Pellinore Warthrop more than I looked like the angry girl he had last seen.

I had no invitation, of course, which was why I was in this adjacent alley, that I might climb through a window. After scaling the hull of a sinking ship with a full grown man tied to my back this was no difficult thing. I fairly slid up the wall and through the window, which pried open with the merest touch of my new knife. I dropped into a back hallway and listened for the hubub. Seamlessly, I slipped among them. I drew no attention. Everyone was too busy quarreling or seeking out old friends. I had eyes only for a tall and dark man or his youthful companion. Will would be seventeen now, nearly a man.

I didn't waste time looking for them in the main crush. I knew where they would be. I sought out a seat for myself. It was a terrible seat, really, too far away from the podium and at an awkward angle. Good for me, vacated around me by the people here to see the actual goings on. But it looked directly upon the Warthrop Box. My heart sprinted beneath my masculine vestments. They were there. They were there before me. I very nearly called out, had to raise my hand to my lips to stop myself.

Will sat with his arms crossed over his now broad shoulders his legs carelessly sprawled out before him. He would have been tall if he had stood. His hair still looked the same. Sandy blonde and sticking up. He was, apparently, too old for my father to forcibly flatten his hair for events. But his face. His sweet and tender face was altered. A scowl turned down the corner of his mouth, his eyes sat unfriendly and distant at a spot on the floor in front of him.

Beside him, sitting rigidly straight, was my father. I wanted to embrace him. I had never wanted that until I saw him, sitting there so sternly. My hands shook, tears, wet and real, bristled under my eyes. I could not tear my eyes from him. I missed him. I missed Will. How easy it would be to reveal myself.

' _Hello, dad,_ ' I would say, voicing the paternal endearment I had rarely thought and never used, _'Bet you thought you were rid of me for good.'_

I would not even have gotten all the words out before Will would be on me, crushing me against his body and I would smell that earthy scent of him. Regardless of the venue he would press his lips against my hair. Father would reel back for a quarter of a moment, dark eyes thrown wide in disbelief. They would scan over the cheekbones and raven hair and brooding eyes that had been his first and best gift. I allowed my imagination to be generous, his face would recover and fill with that coldness he used when he wanted to be Doctor Pellinore Warthrop but he would pull me to his chest. He would smell like Harrington Lane. A bit like dust and a bit like formaldehyde. Or he would smell entirely of cologne.

We would not leave the proceedings, I would tell them to stay. But he would glance at me sometimes as the speakers presented their topics. He would take me back to his hotel, ask me how I survived, ' _Spare no detail.'_

This was where my fantasy congealed. Spare no details, dad? Are you sure? Would I let it spill from my lips, the first murder on the ship. Jack Kearns teaching me to dispose of remains. His hands holding mine in the dark. Carrying him to a lifeboat. I might distract dad for awhile with the cryptid that had attacked us, perhaps he would tell me what it was and its Latin name. I could forestall, asking him what I ought to have done, how the creature should have been best dealt with. But eventually he would want to know how I had escaped if I hadn't been rescued with the sailor who had come back with tales of a siren.

And these words would damn me. I hunted them, dad. I took my pick and cut them apart. I feasted on them. I sucked the marrow from their bones and drank blood like wine. Would he bundle me up and carry me to the Beastie Bin below? He ought to. Label my cage _Femina Famelica_ and warn his colleagues to stay back.

It was better to stay here. I could do it, for their sakes. I could put two people ahead of me, one time in my life did not have to be about my own survival. It could be a choice that I made for the good of Will and my father. To remain in my grave, not raise out of it like a ghoul, mouth dripping blood.

I had picked up a program. For the first time, I looked at it. I almost sobbed. The third speech in line was him. 'Pellinore Warthrop' it said, embossed in purpled text. I would hear his voice. If only they could give one to Will also. I remembered too vividly his whispers in my ear, ' _I promise. I promise. I promise.'_

All through the roll call I watched them, hungry eyes feasting on them as Will scratched his ear and dad shifted with discomfort and boredom. And then, as the last names were sounded, he saw me. What I would not have given for the sight to have been one of absolute recognition. For him to make the choice for me.

My father's gaze swept the audience, waiting impatiently for his turn to speak. And he caught me staring at him. He pulled up for a moment, horror flashing through his eyes. Then he looked upon me with such vicious ferocity I looked away. My heart was leaping in my chest. In part, I felt that he ought to have recognized me. Felt nearly offended that he had not.

But what sort of man would see his dead daughter in a young man? Or perhaps it was that he now saw his dead daughter in too many. He only saw enough of me in my paint of a young masculine monstrumologist to hate to look upon it. He caught me looking four more times. On the last he nudged Will who turned his head up. Oh, to have Will look at me like that. It was duelling parts agony and elation. It tore me apart and I could not move under that gaze. Even from the distance I saw him take in each of my features. I saw hatred cloud his sweet face. He spit something at my father and lurched from the box. I turned my head away, hoping he would not come here. And hoping that he would.

He did not. He only left for a few minutes before he returned to my father's side, his cravat more poorly tied and his hair a little wet. They both refused to glance at me. I waited until it was my father's turn. When the first words spilled from his lips I near to rejoiced. That irritating dry tone. Let it go on forever. I closed my eyes, listening to the sound more than the words. I tried to turn the sound into new words, into casual lessons and reprimands. The words themselves stuck in my brain. I would never forget them. If he only kept talking I would have become an expert monstrumologist by listening alone. It was over too quickly and I had no more of him.

When the speaking for the day was over I tried to slip away. I tried not to run into them. But it was no use. Just before the doors a hand on my shoulder stopped me. Knowing already to whom it belonged, I turned. Looking at him so close I waited for the recognition to form on his face, but I was too far removed from the Annalee he had known.

I stood face to face with my father, looking up at his tumultuous face that was so much like my own.

"It is quite rude to stare," he said coldly. Will was at his side, death coming from his hardened eyes in rolling waves. My father's eyes poured over my face but found nothing to cleave to. Nothing that called out that this was his daughter. I thought I would be relieved if he didn't see me for what I was. But I felt corrupted. My bloody chrysalis had given birth to a creature too altered from my former state for even Doctor Pellinore Warthrop to see it.

I glanced up then away, tethering myself from leaping into his arms. "I am sorry, sir," I said in a deep and demur voice, "I only… well," I decided to play to that infamous vanity, "You are the preeminent Doctor Warthrop."

He drew himself up a bit, relishing the praise. At his side, Will snorted.

"I would like to congratulate you on your paper, Doctor Warthrop," I said, knowing that every moment I stayed was dangerous but unable to draw myself away, "And your speech, it was spellbinding." This part was true, even if it had nothing to do with the topic.

Will laughed aloud at this, one cruel bark. My sweet Will.

Warthrop glowered at him, "Do not mind my assistant."

I relished for him over the details of his paper. I knew them even, after his talk. I had gloried over each word in my father's voice that sounded like Harrington Lane, where people were not eaten and murderers did not snap their teeth at each other with the greatest affection. My father, of course, enjoyed a young monstrumologist fawning over him and allowed it for too long. Hesitantly, trying to keep the hunger from my voice I asked shyly, "I do not suppose that you have a copy of your paper."

Sufficiently praised he turned to Will, "Will Henry, fetch my spare copy from my bag for Mister -" he trailed off looking at me.

"Mead," I said, "John Mead."

Will handed it to me and I took it as though it were a priceless treasure. Which, of course, It was. I ducked my head, "A pleasure to meet you, Doctor Warthrop, Mister Henry."

Then I left, clutching my program with his name embossed and the paper that he had written. That Will had copied out. I was out the door, down the steps, three feet away when I was wrenched around again. It was Will. My Will. I saw behind him, my father racing to catch him.

Will's face was blind with fury looking into mine. He was a crazed thing. With neither preamble nor explanation he drew back and punched me across the jaw. There were instincts built into me. Instincts that had killed a man for less than this. Put a knife through him. But my instincts did not raise their head for my Will. I just stood there and allowed him to hit me. I raised a hand to neither strike back nor even to divert his blows. He smelled the same as ever. His skin against my own, I was desperate enough to take even this. Five blows landed, my nose was bleeding and my lip split open, when he was pulled back.

"Will Henry, what in the devil's name!" Warthrop barked. He looked at me, "I apologize again for my assistant." He looked again at Will, holding him by the shoulders. Will would not look at him. It was touching between them. My father's face was open for a moment, seeking Will. I was half forgotten in the background. My father's next words were for me, but his attention, that singular devotion, was fixed on Will. In petty explanation he said, "He is not right in the head just now, Mr. Mead." He stumbled, still looking only at Will, "My daughter, a dear friend of his, has only just-"

I did not make him say it, "Yes, I did hear. My condolences on your loss, Dr. Warthrop and Mr. Henry, truly. And it is alright. I will neither press charges nor hold a grudge. I understand the peculiar inroads of grief."

"Thank you."

Will still glared at me as though it was I who had murdered Miss Warthrop. I had, of course. But he did not know that. I turned away and walked up the street.

The power of my longing to go home was overwhelming. To turn and reveal myself. I could even beat them back, be curled up in the library when the returned. How desperately I wanted it. To the marrow of my bones. But it would not do. I could not inflict that upon them. Human men lived in 425 Harrington Lane and I had proved what I did to human men.

 **Author's Note: Thanks so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it!**

 **(To WILLOWowl: Thank you for all of the reviews, you can stop apologizing when they are long though, I like hearing what my readers think!)**


	6. The Secrets He Keeps

**Chapter 6: The Secrets He Keeps**

I went back to my hotel with blood dripping off of my face. Every drop of it and inch of my skin wanted to return to Will. To do something to make that horrible intolerable look in his eyes go away. But I kept my feet scraping forward and away from my family.

I sunk into the hotel bed when I was back, I scrubbed off the khol from my brows and loosed my hair, I kicked off my shoes. I laid unmoving until evening. My stomach growled, but I ignored it. There would be no sleep. Not with the memory of Will so immovably in my brain.

It was late, the depths of the night, when he came. I was pulled from my revery by a vicious knocking at the door. Banging really. No polite three taps and a pause for an answer. Constant smashing upon the wood. I was plagued simultaneously by terror and relief.

I opened the door. Knowing already who was behind it.

My Will launched into the room, he shoved me back and kicked the door closed behind him. He was stronger than me. A man in his physical prime to my still unmuscled female frame recovering from abject starvation. He shoved me again. Rage sparked in his eyes.

Spit flew from his mouth as he snarled at me, "You left! You left! You left me!" He shoved me again at the shoulders and I was knocked against the wall of the room. He caged me in with his arms, hands pressed flat on the wall. "You were dead!" He raged, "Did I matter to you at all? Was any word that you said to me true! You broke all of your promises. You said you would stay with me!" He slammed his fist against the wall next to my head, denting the plaster, "Is that why you went with Kearns? Was he a more fitting companion for you? Were you lying to me, was it a game? Was it entertaining to you to get your fingers wrapped around my heart and then wrench it out?" His words flew out with no pause, forgoing coherent transitions to spit out all of his wrath.

My resolve was destroyed. I was not strong enough for this. I pushed myself off the wall and wrapped my arms around him. I clung against his chest, "My Will."

His arms flinched like pincers from the wall, the afixed themselves around me, trying to hold every inch of my body. His voice was broken when he spoke again, "Anna. Anna. My Anna." He buried his face into my hair and I felt the hot tears on his cheeks. I could not pull myself away. I did not have enough fortitude to unwrap my arms, to pull my face from the crook of his neck. His smell pervaded me. I felt his body be wracked with sobs, clutching me to him in desperation.

Years might have passed while we hung to each other and I felt, finally, as though I had returned from the horrors at sea. Finally he pulled himself back, only a few inches. Enough that he could look at me. He was a feast for the eyes. His brow clear and sweet eyes shining with tears. "Anna, you're alive."

Then he was seized again by his mad rage and he flung me back, away from him. Again, I hit the wall.

"How dare you!" He sobbed, then, broken, "Why?"

I tried to defend myself, "I had to go, Will. I couldn't spend an entire lifetime skulking around a house!"

He swore, laughter poured out of him in anguished bursts "You left me for _Monstrumology,_ Anna? Fucking Christ, you are such a goddamned Warthrop!" He swung around, stalking away from me. "To run off and hunt monsters with John Goddamned Kearns? Do you have any idea who he is?"

I answered softly, "Yes."

That altered his assault. He twisted back at me, eyes raking across my face, to my hands, "What did he do, Anna?"

Then it was my turn to laugh, although it had as little humor in it as his had. My laughter came out in breathy, shaky shrieks, "What did _he_ do? Oh, Will."

"Will you tell me?" He asked, his voice was soft now, it oscillated between broken tenderness and savagery, "You can tell me anything, Anna. Remember? I promised that I would stay with you, no matter what you did. _I_ will keep my promise."

"I am doing you a favor not telling you."

"To hell with you and to hell with your favors!"

I closed my eyes and took a slow breath, "Don't tell him."

Will gaped and breathlessly said, "You can't ask that of me."

"Yes, I can."

Will let out a mournful groan, "He is your father."

I pressed my lips together for a moment, "Please, Will."

"You didn't see him, Anna. I thought I was going to have to ring for an ambulance. He did not eat for two weeks! I thought he was going to starve. He just lay in the dark and shouted at me to burn every book in his library. To send word to the Society that he was retiring."

"But he didn't retire."

Will sneered, "Do you understand him at all, Anna! Do you know what sort of torment it took to wrench him from it for even two weeks? The last time someone suggested he quit his work he threw himself from a bridge!"

"You didn't burn his books did you?" I asked in a tender voice, "Or send those letters?"

"No," he spat, "Do you want to know why?"

I nodded, although I was not sure that I did.

His words were cold, filled with anger and hatred, "Because, Annalee, I am not going to let _you_ ruin him." He began picking things up at random, my shoes, vases, anything in reach and throwing them at me to emphasize each point. "You think that you can come in off the the goddamned streets," _THWACK_ , "and throw the worst days of his life back into his face" _THWACK_ , "and pick and pick and pick at him," _THWACK_ , "and then when he finally goddamn cares about you, _THWACK_ , "you run off with that monster of a man and then you die? What gives you the goddamned right!" He lashed out, knocking a vase off the table that stood next to him. I went flying and smashed cacophonously against the wall.

I frowned back at Will, "That's what I'm offering. I'll take off, I won't come back. Pellinore will fix himself up and get over it."

He scoffed and turned away, crossing his arms, "Is that what you're doing around here? You dressed up like a smarmy little monstromologist so you could take off and let him 'fix himself up?'"

"I'm sorry!" I shouted, "I had to come back once."

"Why? You don't care! You didn't care enough to write, or to tell us where you were going, or to say goodbye even! You just ran off with John goddamn _Kearns_ without a goddamned word! Why did you bother to come back here?"

I cried desperately, "I missed you. I missed you and I missed my father and I wanted to come home."

He uncrossed his arms and said coming back to tenderness, "Then come home."

I shook my head, looking at the floor.

Will swore again and threw up his hands, "Let me know, though, if I should leave before Kearns comes back. Because if I see him I'm going to kill him."

I didn't mention my disbelief that he could best Jack, "He isn't here. He's not even in the country."

"Good," he snarled.

"Are you going to tell dad?"

"Shit," he said, "No. Like I told you two years ago, when you said that you were my friend, I will keep your secrets. Did I ever tell him any of them? While you ran around on your own thinking you were so smart, did I ever tell him a single goddamned thing? Even though he would have hated me if he had found out? Did I ever one time betray you?"

"No, Will," I said, "You didn't. I didn't want to do this to you again. You came here."

"I came here? You're the one who dressed up like little Pellinore and paraded in front of me!"

"I didn't mean to get caught. I just wanted to see you. I wanted to see my father. I didn't want you to recognize me. He didn't."

He punched a wall, putting another dent in the room's plaster, "I hope you don't think that's because it was a good disguise. He sees you everywhere, can't sleep through the night thinking you're coming through the door. A month after you disappeared he accosted a dark haired girl at a shop thinking she was you."

"...Really?"

He howled, "You don't have the right to know, you don't get to know a single goddamned thing about him. You're dead remember."

"Alright," I said, "Alright. I won't come to another colloquium. I won't try to come back again. I'll just...go."

"Back with Kearns?"

"He gave me a key to his house."

Will looked at me with quaking and desperate eyes, "You are asking me to keep this from him but if he ever found out that his daughter was alive and _I_ knew it and _I_ did not tell him. He would never forgive me for it. All so that you may go back with the most monstrous excuse for a man that I have ever known."

I stared at him for I had no response. There were no words that I could fathom large enough to ask for this. To rip away the Anna for whom he had held such tender fraternal devotion and ask him also to hang the only other person he had out on tenterhooks.

Will tipped back his head and pinched the bridge of his nose, "I won't tell him. I will keep your secret. As I always do." He ran both of his hands through his hair, "How is it that I have become the keeper of Warthrop secrets? How has this possibly fallen to me?" He turned suddenly and stalked toward the door and opened it, standing in that liminal space between the darkness of my hotel room and the bright hall beyond."You are my best friend, Warthrop, and I how I hate you."

The thing that I was to become was born upon Will's slamming of the door. It put inside of me the impetus. It was the pounding of the final nail in the coffin built for Anna. I was no longer tired but filled with a strange zeal. I started a fire in grate and built it until it blazed. Into it I pitched my fine dresses, the fashionable parasols and delicate gloves. This was not how I would be remade.

The sun bore up through the window and I swept out of the room. I had only my man's suit left and I would have to be quick. I still had money enough from the lindworms. Jack had been my benefactor in my lady's clothing, a cost incurred for the privilege he flexed in picking them out. I found a tailor and plied him well enough. I would not be able to masquerade as a man. My figure, the undeniably feminine cast of my face, had worn out that old disguise. For a few more years I might have been able to pretend that I was a pretty young man, but beyond my early twenties that would fail too. More practical to embrace the inevitable and plan accordingly. I no longer had need for the defense anyway. I was she who ate men whole. I would not cower and hide what lived between my legs. If they wanted to think me less for how I was endowed then on their own head be it.

I had made sturdy and tightly fitted pants, around which was attached a skirt that did not wrap entirely around, just enough to avoid the charge of wearing less than a skirt in public. It was made of a stiff fabric, more akin to a long asymmetrical jacket then a proper skirt. The skirt was why I had elected for this tailor, known for his clever workmanship. It was made to be, in a pinch, torn away quite easily without being entirely destroyed, leaving only the trousers beneath. A high collared coat to go with it, with pockets within and without.

I procured also a new knife, sleek black boots, an instrument case and its requisite instruments. I wanted also to buy a revolver but thought that making that sort of investment without the guidance of Jack was just a misuse of resources.

Jack was not home when I got there more than a week later. The house was empty had had clearly been so for some time. I didn't mind. I restocked the larder and set to work. I would need my own eventually, but Jack had the books I needed to start out. If Will was going to sling accusations of my choosing Monstrumology over him then _fine_. I would be the best goddamned monstrumologist in the goddamned world and let him rot.

Anger may have been the most apparent of my impeti, but it was not the only one. I was thinking of my father. Perhaps I could not wear the disguise of a man, but as long as he did not see me, it wouldn't matter. Provided that Will did not rat me out I might be able to write to Dr. Pellinore Warthrop. Under the guise of John Mead, that is. I might even get letters back. This idea, of course, hinged upon me being worthy of Dr. Warthrop's attention. I was confident that I could achieve that, but it would take some doing.

I did not really know where to start in the quest to teach myself monstrumology. My formal education had been improved somewhat under Jack's tutelage. Insomuch that he had sharpened my reading and knowledge of human anatomy. But I was by no means a woman of any letters. It would be a long road.

But I felt fueled by the teasing letters of my father's paper. I had read it ten thousand times I felt, until I knew each word backward and forward. The letters that Will had shaped and my father and drafted.

I had begun my pilfering of Jack's library at what seemed to be a practical starting place. I heavy and dust covered tome whose title even I was familiar with, _Gray's Anatomy._ The text was dense and it took me a long time to go over each page. After not long I had to go and also fetch Jack's dictionary. When that proved insufficient for medical jargon I just began writing down the things that I didn't understand. I could ask Jack when he returned.

I had never had much devotion to reading, but I felt entirely reborn. My focus honed to the pages and I could not be torn away. I remembered only when my stomach complained painfully that I had neglected to eat. More annoyed than anything, I fetched something that I could munch on while I read and returned to my book. It felt like a calling, like a hunger in and of itself. I had felt it before, when the Beast of Gévaudan had charged me and in the pit of the lindworm. I had never felt it outside of imminent danger. Regardless of this drive, it was slow going.

When I was halfway through the work, although I was confident that I would have to read it a second time, and perhaps a third, before I understood it all, Jack came home.

I had the strange sensation of hearing the door open and the sound of footsteps, without realizing that I ought to react to them. It wasn't until Jack spoke that I looked up.

"Well aren't we beginning to look the part, Miss Warthrop."

My head shot up. He stared at me for a second then laughed viciously. He approached me and tilted up the book to see what I was reading so voraciously.

"Graduated from the Verne novels I see," but his tone did not indicate any disapproval of my choice of reading material. "Go to sleep, Lee, you look terrible. Bathe first."

"I'm alright." I said, looking back down.

"If that sounded like anything short of a demand I misspoke," Jack said dryly. Wisely, he plucked the book from my hands. "You'll get this back in ten hours," he said, "Go. Oh, don't worry, I am marking your page, can't you see?"

Begrudgingly I rose and returned to my bedroom to see to my own care.

I awoke to a pleasant surprise. Having scoured myself clean the night before and unhappily committed myself to some sleep after seeing the dark shadows beneath my eyes, I fled down the stairs for breakfast and to ask Jack the questions I had prepared. Again, he was not there.

Not gone. His bag was by the door and his coat hung on the hook. But not in the house that I could see. Sleeping probably. I set about devouring a breakfast and waited for him to wake up.

It only took him a few minutes and the speed at which he came down, dressed in the same clothes he had been wearing the night before, with dirt on his fingers and his hair coming loose from his tie, led me to suspect that I had been wrong about him sleeping.

"Good morning, my assistant apprentice!" He beamed, "Eat up, I have a gift for you. Your source of reading material got me to thinking that it was high time that I teach you some of my more refined knowledge."

I finished my food and he pulled me to my feet before I could clean up after myself. He led me upstairs, to the third floor of the building and then pulled down a hatch that I had never seen before. Being a tall skinny building, rather than a sprawling one. Jack did not have any private wings. He allowed me in his study freely and it was my own sense of privacy rather than a decree on his part that kept me out of his bedroom.

He climbed up the ladder first and I followed quickly after. The attic was not a dingy place with sloped ceilings and dusty boxes. It was both exceptionally neat and brightly lit. The ceiling was interspersed with glass and sunlight poured beautifully into the room. Around the walls were gas lights that I could see even in the morning light would illuminate the room grandly after dark. Under these lights were mahogany cupboards and counters with shining brass hardware. Clean bottles and instruments were meticulously organized on these counters, sparkling in the sunlight.

But Jack's gift lay on the long table in the center of the attic. A woman stripped entirely of her clothing, skin pale and cold was laid out upon that table, obviously dead. The table she lay on was metal with ridges limning the sides. It was very slightly concave to that the table sloped gently toward the center. I could see tubing coming down from it, clearly to drain away the fluid of dissection.

I didn't ask where he had gotten her. Just put on the apron he handed to me and listened to his lesson on anatomy. I was still far more hands on than bookish and I was quickly immersed in a practical demonstration. He took me through every part of what had made her human. From the organs to the muscles under the skin. Each of her bones. He gave each of them names. He taught them all to me over this corpse, and the next, and the next.

Clad in my new attire, the September air brisk on my face, I walked down the cobbled street with great purpose, instrument case clutched in my hand. I had been on the hunt for this for weeks. Ever since I saw the first reports in the London paper.

The biggest gap in Jack's library had been Monstrumology texts, him not being technically of the trade. I had worried over this for awhile until I was struck with such an obvious realization I could not help but be angry with myself. I had in my possession a program of the Society's colloquium. I had spent most of my time looking at the schedule of events, where my father's name was laid out. But the first four pages were a listing of the attending members, along with their city of residence.

Obviously London had her own in the business. I wasn't stupid enough to seek them out. The world of Monstrumology was small and I looked far too much like Pellinore Warthrop, and the tale of his lost daughter must be too well known, for me to risk that. What I did risk was to sneak into their libraries and thieve their books.

It was those books that had led me here, to this dingy street of Spitalfields. The slums that stretched before me, up against the dirty sky, smelled of my first home. The air was cacophonous with the multilingual shouting of German and Polish immigrants. The stench that rose from the streets was that of human filth and feces. I knew that when the darkness fell there would be alleys filled with fighting dogs and cocks, and the other alleys where boys boxed and men's lives were bet on. Alleys such as those had once been my home. But that was not why I was here now.

The trouble with Monstrumologists is that unless you charge a hunting fee, like Jack, it doesn't pay very well. You need family money backing you up to even get you into the field. This led to a particular problem. The victims of urban cryptids were almost exclusively the desperately impoverished. Like crime and disease, monsters thrived in overcrowded tenements and undereducated homes. Places where rich boys who went to colloquiums did not often frequent.

There is a language of the poor that is not taught in schools. The other half who lived clean in their palatial estates knew it and avoided the places where dirt crept. It was a language I had spoken since birth. A language learned in the Whyo brawls and nights on a bed full of mites with a hungry belly. It was a language I still spoke in the way I walked and how I listened.

I, for instance, knew that poor women, in particular, poor immigrant women, did not call doctors to bear children. Midwives, usually of a nunnish order, were sometimes employed, though not often. The doctors, after all, were cut of the same cloth as most Monstrumologists. They were too clinical for their own good for this sort of work. This treacherous battlefield of female biology that had sent many veterans of its dangers into an early grave. And, if one were a doctor of the higher order, what did it matter to you if some tawdry woman of the night died, her doomed babe along with her. Was it not only two fewer sufferers?

At thirteen, when I had left the New York slums for the Warthrop estate, I had already been present at many births. It was impossible to avoid them they were so frequent. Amongst the streetwalkers or married women, among young girls unable to fight back, it seemed a baby was born every week just in a single tenement. And with those babies was born joy and horror, delight and dread.

I had heard every whisper there was to hear. I could listen between them better than a high born doctor and see what was and what was not. I knew how to hear the difference between a baby called, "Spawn of the devil," meaning the worst way a girl had been put into that condition and "Spawn of the devil," meaning something was terribly wrong. It was all of this that would earn me my prize.

It had to be a good first offering. Good enough to get his attention. The thing I hunted was elusive, had never been captured alive. Nor had it ever been known to leave its host with her life. I would do both. And I would send my prize to the first in the field.

I entered the squalid tenement building and climbed the rickety, tawdry stairs toward the third level. On the second, stood a girl, younger than me, smoking. Her face was painted in the vivid colors of her occupation.

"You mus' be tha' slick broad I was tol' ta wait 'ere for," she said, blowing smoke from the side of her mouth.

"Mary Lightly?" I asked, "They tol' me you'd gam for me." I let myself fall back into gutter talk. It was the wrong city, but the right language.

She grinned, showing her crooked and yellow teeth, "Yeah, tha's me. Up here with ya, come on, she's in a bad way."

Mary led me up the stairs to number 387, the home of Casimir Szczpanik. The room was filthy and smelled of must and human urine. I was not taken aback, I had lived in worse. Casimir was lying in her squalid bed, distended belly pointed toward the sky. She could not have been more than fifteen. Her and Mary were friends, or rather, co-workers, as it was her profession that had so afflicted Casimir.

Mary went to her, soothing her brow with a cool rag, talking to her in Polish. I heard myself be introduced. "Elizabeth Baron."

Mary looked up at me and respoke what Casimir was howling in English, "She says it ain't no baby, says the devil's in 'er belly. You want me to tell her she's full o' tosh, lady doc?"

"No, she's right. Tell her she knows right. Tell her I'll help." It struck me then, as it had struck me on my way, that there was a path where I would be in Casimir's place. I had been spared only by a bit of nerve and enough luck that my father had been someone of more means.

"She want's ta know if she's gonna die."

"Tell her that she might." She would know a lie, she would smell it out. When Mary had repeated it, Casimir looked wildly at me. She looked horribly young. Too young for this. I was filled to my edges with a desire to save her. I could not save her from everything. But I could save her from this.

"How many months?" I asked.

Mary interpreted, "Bout seven, hard ta know. Ol' lady upstairs says seven and she had bout sixteen of the things."

"Good, tell her that's good. Tell her to lie on her back and spread her legs."

Mary winked at me, "Oh she can do that well enough, lady, tha's what got her here afta' all!" But she interpreted, and Casimir obeyed.

I drew out a box, opened the lid and donned thick leather gloves. If you cut her open in a cesarian section, they would kill her trying to bury deeper. If you starved her to get them out they would eat her alive. If you waited for her body to bear them like the child they pretended to be they would lacerate her keeping themselves in. But I had a theory, because I knew the cause.

There was hardly any literature on them. It was even said so brazenly in one of the texts, that they were the scourge of ladies of the night, so study was usually forsaken. Those women, it had said, had chosen their deaths. It had make me shake to hear. It had made me again the girl sold out by her mother. The girl who's quick hand with a knife had been the only thing that kept a full grown man off of her. I would save this goddamned girl. The book did say that they were born in September and October in the Occident. The literature hence far, what little of it there was, thought that perhaps that was because the fall was the best season for their babies to enter the world. I had an alternate theory, that nine months before, the two coldest months of the year were prime months for incubation. And I knew that women put stoves and ashes up their skirts to stay warm. Or sat atop them. I had seen it. I had done it.

I looked at Mary, "I need you to light a fire, heat rags, I need them hot."

She did as she was bade and I could see why. It took no medical expert to see that something was amiss. Casimir had revealed her belly in pulling up her nightdress. It wriggled with tiny bodies that could not be human. Tiny paw prints came and went under her skin. They would take any help that was offered.

When I got the rags, and I demanded they be changed when they cooled even a little, I put into a nest between her legs at her entrance. In those rags I laid another of the things I had brought, taken from one of Jack's lessons. Strips of human flesh. That is what they prefered, after all.

Then I took out the ice that I had purchased and kept wrapped up in my bag. I chipped off chunks and gave it to Casimir, "Eat," I said. She understood without translation. I laid more ice between her belly and her breasts as she ate it, draping the frigid rags from the ice block across her stretched skin. She began to scream.

I swore but I knew what must be done. I knew it on hunch and on intuition and by the design of my theory. I drew my left hand out of my glove and wrapped it in hot rags until it felt nearly burnt then, coated in vaseline, I slid it inside of her.

Chased by the cold, lusting for the heat of my hand that I had made hotter than the rest of the poor girl's body, I lured them to the nest I had made. They fled into it, for it was hot and filled with meat. The one in the lead bit down on me, sharp teeth slicing my skin. That drove them even faster. I resisted the urge to wrench my hand out and drew them instead one by one until they toppled out of her, wriggling and could be caught.

Black skinned and slimy they were each barely six inches long with whipping tails like mice. Their long whiskers twitched and those sharp teeth snapped in horrible clicks. Sooterkin. I seized each of them in my gloved hand and deposited them in my box. The bottom of the box had a drawer which I packed with hot ashes from the fire to warm them. There had been thirteen.

Casimir had stopped her screaming. Mary had swooned at the sight of the creatures that now thrashed in my box.

Blood was stained on Casimir's bed and between her legs. I had my prize, but I didn't leave. She shook so badly. I went to her side and lifted her up. She weighed nothing but she clung to me. She smelled of urine and of feces and human decay. There was a wash bin in the corner that I laid her in and I washed her up. I ran my hands through her hair and cleaned the blood from her legs. There was a fresh nightshirt, a man's, in her closet. I put her in that and made her the cleanest bed I could. By then, she had stopped bleeding.

Mary was awake by then, "She says thank ye, lady." She told me, "You wanna me to tell ya when foul stuff comes 'ere?"

"Yes," I said and I gave her an address. Not Jack's. I had rented a flat I used only for mail.

She took it, "She's my best friend, lady. Thanks fer not lettin her go off up to 'eaven."

Then I left, clutching my prize.

Eleven of them, I sold to a fence. One of them, I kept for myself. And one. The biggest and the strongest, I packaged up with specific instructions. It is to stay warm at all times. It is to be fed one handful of the food I have provided each day. You will bring it to the address in person. Give it only to Doctor Warthrop. You will telegraph me when you have done it.

The passage of my gift cost me half of my earnings. But I did not send the little thing alone. The first ever caught alive. I also wrote down how I'd done it, my theory, that the girl had lived. I wrote down the notes from my dissection of the beast and sent it all to New Jerusalem with this letter:

 _The Esteemed Doctor Pellinore Warthrop,_

 _I hope that this missive finds you well. It was my pleasure to make your acquaintance at the Society Colloquium. I do hope that you remember me, I am the one your young man assaulted upon the steps. I do not mean to presume, but I have sent along a specimen I thought that you might find interest in. I am no doctor yet, but I do believe it will have some importance in the field. There has never been one captured alive, as far as I am aware. I have included my notes on its procurement along with it._

 _Your loyal servant,_

 _John Mead_

And then. I waited.

 **Author's Note: Thank you for reading this chapter! I hope you enjoyed it!**

 **(To WILLOWowl: No, that wasn't the end! Sorry for the confusion. In answer to your Q I will only say that in keeping in line with how Will grows up, I am attempting to allow canon to fully influence even my non canon events.)**


	7. Letters to a Colleague

**Chapter 7: Letters to a Colleague**

Jack, as it happened, did have a private room, a scummy flat in Whitechapel. I knew about it, had the address even, but had no inclination to visit, if he wanted me there, he'd have brought me. He knew about my little flat too, but left me that for myself.

My flat had become somewhat more than an address for my private correspondence, even if that had been its original purpose. I had there, now, three chairs and a little bed. I had never slept there, the bed was not for me. The saving of Casimir Szczpanik had not remained a secret. Word had spread from painted lip to bug infested ear. It had been whispered in German and in Polish, in broken English and the quick learned English of children. They did not come out of trust. At least, not at first. But if a monster squirms beneath your bed or inside your skin, something must be done. And I did not charge a fee, except, of course, I got to keep my prize.

It happened first, somewhat by accident. Hadn't all of this, every ill conceived part of it from my own birth, to my stumbling hissing and spitting into my father's home, to running off with Jack Kearns, happened somewhat by accident? No. I would not allow myself that. The first run with Jack might have been forged on accident, but I had chosen to go with him the second time. I had chosen to cast my burden onto Will.

I had come to my flat to check my mail. I had come every day since I had sent that letter to my father, even before my package could have reasonably reached him. On the day that it came, I didn't have the patience to go back to Jack's house. I just sat on the floor to read it. I had not yet procured my furnishings.

 _Dear John Mead,_

 _For one not yet even fully indoctrinated in the field, this discovery, in and of itself is laudable. Your parcel reached me intact, specimen alive, it has been sent forward to the Monstrumarium in New York for keeping. Your design for its containment was well thought out, although flawed in some small ways. Your reasoning for using coal rather that a system of steam was bafflingly ill conceived. The coal was not secured and travel caused both hot and cold spots in the box itself. Was I incorrect in reading that your entire hypothesis hinged on the creatures' predilection for warmth? Why then would you design a structure that did not adequately provide for that warmth? Or was it, perhaps, that the use of steam, a technology that has been under the purview of human invention since the ancient Romans, was beyond you? The I have corrected your design and included my notes on this correction in the later pages of this missive. Please look through them carefully if you are able, even, to comprehend their value._

 _However, you are quite correct, a Sutterkind, although a common enough tale amongst housewives, has never been captured while living, nor indeed without the demise of its host. I expect your technique for extraction will be included in the official best practices at our next Society Colloquium with some alterations. Although if you operated on the young lady with the same ability with which you designed your cage, she would have been in better hands had she been given to a blind butcher. The next time you encounter a woman in such a state be advised that before you shove your hands into her birthing canal she ought to be given an ocytocic to induce labor. I have no doubt you caused severe damage to her cervix that might be irreparable. An oversight of this calibre leads me to believe that you are not a scientist but a lower order of ape that has been taught the ability to dress yourself._

 _As I have said, I included my corrections to your containment design, however this is not the only correction I have made. Your notes and method of dissection were unaccountably poorly completed to the point of amateurishness. Who are you studying under that allowed such abysmal work? Even the poorest student knows that your technique described for removing its organs would damage them beyond helpfulness. Let me ask you, did you use a scalpel for the dissections or did you find that a dull kitchen knife better suited you? For how else would you opening of its cavity be so ineptly done? For your own edification I have corrected those notes as well and included my own._

 _Do not hesitate to send forward any other of your worthwhile procurements._

 _Yours in professionalism,_

 _Doctor Pellinore Warthrop_

Along with it was a brief note, shoved in the envelope by his indispensable assistant.

 _My Anna,_

' _I ought to have known, Will Henry. I saw that she wore her boots. I saw the trousers beneath her skirt. I thought that she was merely being overcautious. I believed she was frightened of what she had seen in that city. I left her to that too, though, did I not? Was it not me that left her in that squalor? Why did she never tell me what she saw there? She told me once that she did not feel fear, Will Henry. But did she fear when her mother was killed? Or when she saw her fellow young girls take to the the streets? Was she afraid when John Chanler was in those tenements? I might have walked right passed her, as ignorant then as I was at the colloquium. How did I not see that she was restless? How could she not have been? She is mine. I would have been restless. Will Henry, if I had only been a step faster. Had I only not let her go, she only cut me across the knuckles._

' _How can I call myself a man of scientific observation when I failed so entirely to see her? Might she have remained had my letters been more sufficient? Had I better understood the failings of her previous education? I sent her to her doom, Will Henry. No, do not deny it. It does not matter if there was a chance for me to stop her or not. She was my daughter, Will Henry, if she is dead then I have failed.'_

 _Do you come on the wings of his guilt, Eumenides? To torment him until he plucks out his eyes? You foul thing. Befitting companion to your John Kearns._

 _With affection,_

 _Your Will_

It was written in Will's hand. Will, of course, had not been fooled. My heart clenched upon its reading. So vicious were the words and soothing the salutation.

As my father had promised, he included my own notes, now covered in his corrections, and a copy of his. I felt a small twinge of guilt at making Will recopy all of these notes. But my elation at being sent my father's work was too great to dawdle on bad feelings. Awkwardly, I raised the notes to my nose and smelled them. Ink and paper and no more. No vestiges of that hand that had written them.

The letter, of course, was viciously cutting, but how could I possibly have expected anything less out of him? I read the notes a thousand times, until it began to grow dark outside and I was forced to put them away, having no lamp in the room. My next dissection would be better.

I had just risen to take my leave and return to Jack's house when there was a fervent knock at the door.

"Lady doc! 'ey you there? Liz Baron?" It was the frightened voice of Mary Lightly.

I slid the thick envelope into my case and opened the door, it was brighter outside, where the lamps were lit on the street, than it was here. "Mary?" I asked, "What're you doing here? What'sa matter?"

She flung her arms around me, "Oh, God'n heaven, thank Chris' yer 'ere," then, looking around the room, "Christ its dark in there, you live in the dark or what?"

"What's wrong?" I repeated. She looked in a bad way. Purple bruises were scattered up her arms and her eye was swollen shut. This, of course, did not necessarily mean monsters.

"I don' wanna presume or nothin' but you said, you said if there was sommat foul to get'cha."

"I meant it, tell me."

"It's Mrs. Bachmeier, she gone lost it. Tryin'a kill her little boy. Says he ain't what he say he is. She's got'im locked up see, inna closet. Won' let nobody near 'im."

"Take me to her," I said, pulling my coat on and picking up my bag.

Mary pulled me through the streets by the hand. She knew every alley of this place and I tried to memorize them as we went. She was a good deal shorter than me, and had a cigarette hanging from her lips as we went. Her hair, even in the filth in which she lived, was breathtaking. Golden brown as honey, shimmering in streetlamps. She took us back into her tenement building and hauled me through the long dingy hallway on the first floor. The whole building smelled of shit.

Our shoes crunched on bugs and rot as we walked and the door we wanted was not so much a door as a heavy wooden board laid against the frame. She knocked on it anyway, then, without waiting for a reply, shoved it to the side and drew me in.

If the tenement itself was loud, it was nothing to the caterwauling inside this unit. Mrs. Bachmeier was stretched out over the door to a cupboard, holding it shut with her bulk. She was broad and red faced woman with a ratty hair and a bulbous nose. It was her eyes though, that held me. Crazed and rageful, full of anger and fear and loss, she looked about the room. Shoved against the opposite wall were, to my count, thirteen children, ranging in age from teenagers to infants. They were dirty, smelled foul, and clung to each other, fearing their mother's wrath. Nearly all of them were crying.

I was momentarily surprised that the combined power of the three eldest, all teenagers, two boys and a girl, were not enough to overcome the mother. But then I saw it, gleaming in her hand. A rusted kitchen knife that she gripped with white knuckles.

When we entered she shrieked at me in hoarse German. Unsteadily, her eldest daughter translated, "Mama says not to come in, says there is a devil inside the box. Says Hans is not there." Her tone changed, and she pleaded with me, "Help him, yah? He's just a little boy!"

"Tell her that I believe her," I said, "Tell her it will be alright. Tell her I'm here to help."

Mary piped in, "She'sa one what 'elped Cas upstairs."

All of this was relayed and the woman, crazy eyed, somewhat relented. With a little more cajoling, she allowed me to approach the cupboard where Hans was locked. It was kept closed with a broom handle shoved between the cupboard doors' handles, but the boy beat against it furiously, bowing the doors out.

I opened my case and drew out chloroform and a rag. The boy would need to be sedated if I were going to get a good look at him. I enlisted the help of Mary, who tugged free the broom while I crouched at the ready. The boy shot out, his teeth bared. I knocked him to the ground, rag pushed over his little mouth. He thrashed and then he was still.

Limp on the dirty floor, I laid him out. He could not be more than four or five, and undersized. He had shit himself in the cupboard, that and urine coating his pants. I stripped him and cleaned him up as best as I could. I called for lamps, as many as they could find. They were dutifully brought and put around me.

I had never done this on a body so small, nor on one so alive. I knew what the claim was. I had heard the myth, for who had not? The whisper of children who came home not children at all. Snatched in the night and replaced by something else. As a child, it was a story I had believed. The Changeling.

I had a new lense now. A lense given to me by my father and by a few more years upon the earth. A changeling in the classic form would mean a monster who could not only snatch children without having ever been seen, but could replicate them so exactly only the vague sense of their mother could discern the switch. An impossibility. I could imagine my father's disdain at the idea.

"Tell me about the boy, how you knew," I said and it was echoed in German by the daughter. I found out shortly her name was Margaret.

Through Margaret's English I was given Mrs. Bachmeier story:

"He was such a sweet boy. The sweetest boy I ever make. He always good to his little sisters, always good to me. Help me with the washing and always with the cooking. Sweet boy, my little Hans. But then one day, he smell wrong. His face, it smell sour and old. I made him take a bath, heated up water and all. Scrub him down. But the smell still there. Yes. Then the change came. I knew when he walloped he sister there in the snout. He never a boy to get in fights. Not like his brother Reinhart, no. No fighting for my Hans. But he hit her and I knew he was wrong. Then the baby. He almost kicked my tiny Adelaide, but I knew he was wrong and I pulled him off her. He started to spit and to swear and he smelled wrong. He couldn't remember not a thing. Then today, this morning, he took my good knife and he went for me. But I am no fool and I got him locked up in my cupboard. That is how I knew. He is not my Hans. My Hans is gone through the open window."

I started to examine him. His pulse was as slow as I would expect for someone unconscious. But she had said that it was his face that had smelled 'wrong.' I took an examination sniff and recoiled. She was right. The boy smelled acidic and beneath that, rotten. I found it, then and I knew as soon as I saw it that he was as good as dead already. Dried fluid caked inside his ears, dripping out. It was not the right color for an infection. I needed no training to know what an ear infection looked like, they raged rampant in neighborhoods like this where I had spent my first thirteen years. This was no green or yellow, nor even the red of picked scabs. An oozy gray dribbled out. Brain.

I looked up at his mother and shook my head. I said, "I'm sorry. It's your boy, but he's going to die. It's going to hurt."

She did not wail, just set her jaw, and said through her eldest, "You do it. You do it quick now. I watch six of mine die out of sick and I not let more get sick with him. You say he gonna die you do it and take him away."

There was nothing like motherhood in the slums to make you hard. It had made my mother hard. The boy was unconscious and he wouldn't wake up. Jack had shown me the fastest way. A clean cut through the heart. It felt like a defeat. I had saved Casimir, but not the boy Hans.

I wrapped him up and hefted him into my arms. He was light. Mary came with me out of the house.

"So whatcha gonna do wit 'im?" She asked, lighting another cigarette.

"I'm gonna cut him open," I answered, "and see what did it."

She shrugged, "If ya can't save 'im, why bother?"

"Might be able to save the next one." How many would it take? Was there a balance sheet, Casimir's life against Reuben Irvings? Saving this boy from his suffering while I tormented Will? I didn't think so. There was nothing to balance, and no one to do the balancing.

I was glad it was so dark, it made it easier to get the body to Jack's house without being seen. Mary left me at the edge of the slums.

Before I left her I said, "If you need me, and I'm not around, leave me a note, I'll find you."

"Can't read, lady doc."

"Put a scratch in the door then, or something under it, I'll know it's you. What number are you at?"

"240, don't come if my shades down though, doc, I'm workin'." She waved, sticking her cigarette into her mouth and left me to walked with my burden back to Jack's. I draped him over my shoulder so I could unlock the door. I nearly ran into Jack in the entryway. He was just taking off his coat.

He raised an eyebrow at me, "Is that a child off the street, Lee? Where is the sport in that?" But he was smirking.

In the lamplight, I could see that his clothes beneath his overcoat were filthy. Dirt on his knees and blood spattered savagely up his shirt. Probably his face too, at one point, for I could see smears of it around his neck.

"Been busy?" I asked.

He bared his teeth at me in a grin, "Oh, quite. I was rather looking forward to a bath, unless you need a hand."

"Get the hatch for me?"

He obliged, preceding me up the stairs and pulling the attic ladder down. I carried the boy up and laid him on the autopsy table, "You can go have your bath now," I said to him, "I'm alright on my own." I didn't ask him what he had done to get that much blood splattered over him, but then, he didn't ask me what I was doing with a dead boy over my shoulder.

He disappeared from the hatch and I turned to my prize. He was altogether too little. I peered at him, unsure how to start. It was more than obvious that if it was indeed something worth my time, it would be in the kid's head. I'd have to cut into it.

I started first with a razor. The boy had a mass of matts and fouled hair clouted around his head that would only serve to get in my way. I stripped it away swathe by swathe. WHen he was bared, I awkwardly turned to the assemblage of instruments that gleamed on the counter. I had not cut into a brain before. I could, of course, just guess. But this might be the only specimen and I didn't want to do something to ruin it, or to induce an even more vitriolic letter from my father. Although it had not escaped me that he had spared more words, and far more emotion, for an incompetent young monstrumologist in training than he had for his schoolgirl daughter.

I flipped open the hatch with my foot, "Jack!" I shouted. I waited a few seconds then, having quite forgotten that he had said he was going to take a bath, I shouted again, "JACK!" Still, I heard nothing. I bit my tongue, I wasn't sure how long the thing, if there was indeed a thing, would survive in a dead brain. "JAAAAAAAAACK!"

He appeared up the hall with a slammed bedroom door. Trousers were hanging low off of his damp body, hair wet and sticking to his face. That face. He looked torn between amusement and disgusted anger. Although I was confident he would have done me no harm, I was glad he was unarmed nonetheless.

"What," he did not say it as a question, "do you need so urgently."

"Oh, sorry," I said, "I forgot you were in a bath. How do you cut into a skull?"

"That could not have waited twenty minutes?"

"I didn't know you were busy."

He scowled, "You might have drawn that conclusion from my refusal to answer your first two summons."

I shrugged, "Thought you couldn't hear me."

"Sweetheart, the dead heard you," He muttered darkly as he climbed up the ladder.

"...But as long as you're here.." I said trailing off.

He looked wearily through a drawer, then, extracting a bit of string, tied up his wet hair. "Why must it be done this instant?"

I hesitated, I wasn't sure how he would feel about me bringing possibly dangerous creatures into his home with neither forewarning nor permission, "I think something's in his brain and I don't want it to die."

He turned and looked at me, without warning he started to laugh, then exclaimed, "Ah! It is Monstrumology that has you carting dead children through my doors! I might have known. Go to that cupboard, there are masks, get both of them." Then, with a bedraggled sort of sigh and a contemptuous look he heaved himself up onto a counter, reclined against the wall, and stretched his legs out in front of him, arms crossed over his bare chest.

I went to the aforementioned cupboard and found a twin pair of sieved masks, domed to fit over one's mouth and nose. One of them had the stains of use around the fabric edges and a fair few dents in its mesh. The other was crisp and new.

"Toss me the older one," Jack said, holding out his hand, "The other one is for you. You ought to wear it whenever you cut through bone."

I did toss him the older one, and fitted the other on my own face. Somewhat muffled I asked, "Did you buy this for me?"

He raised an eyebrow scathingly and in a dry tone he said, "It isn't as though I would need two."

"Just assumed someday we'd be cutting up bones?"

He laughed, "Call it wishful thinking."

He didn't get up from his spot tucked against a wall, but he called out instructions from there. I could hardly fault him, he was only half dressed and looked exhausted. "Yes, that saw," he said boredly, "Alright, now start just there, no not there, lower! Move your hand now, let me see, that's it."

Under his guidance I cut delicately through the bones of the skull. My heart raced when I wrapped my fingers over the dome of the skull, ready to pull it free. Something might be waiting for me under there. Unnervingly, my blood sang in my veins as though I were on a hunt. Though, I suppose, I was.

With an easy tug, the top of the skull came off cleanly with a wet squelch into my hand. I dropped it quickly into a waiting tray and scooped up my forceps and a glass jar, ready to pluck out whatever I found. What I were met with however, was not the sort of thing that I was expecting.

I had thought that it would be some sort of invisible infection, or a slimy worm of some kind. I was wholly and entirely wrong. Nuzzled into the poor boy's brain was a tiny limbed creature. Its body was disgustingly humanoid, fragile little arms and legs and minescule clawed fingers. All of it stretched with glistening grey skin. Its head was domed and eyeless, with a thin mouth slashed all the way across it. All in all, it was no more than an inch tall. I let out a soft cry of triumph and thrill thundered through my body.

It shuddered in the cold and I seized it with the forceps around the waist and pulled it out of the soupy brain. Jack let out a noise of disgust when he saw it. Although I wasn't sure if it was the tiny pixie of a creature or the grey lumpy liquid slurping out from the cranial cavity that got him.

I dropped the creature into the jar and snapped shut the lid. It lay on the bottom, limply, too weak to pick itself sure that it would not leap up and attack, I reopened the jar slowly and scooped up some of the boy's brain and tipped it into the jar. Immediately the thing began to eat, slurping the liquified brain matter into it's mouth. I turned suddenly, fervor in my blood and seized a lamp from the counter, lighting it and removing the glass flame guard. On the metal rim I set metal tin, I had learned my lesson concerning heat distribution, and the jar atop it.

Task completed, I swung around to Jack with a grin. I felt alive with a wild flame. Something in my features must have amused him, because he smirked back, chuckling to himself. I set again to the body, carefully scooping out the remainder of the brain to feed my find and setting it aside. Then I turned to the rest of the head. Under my breath, I murmured things as I noticed them.

"I hope you do not expect me to take dictation for you," Jack said dryly.

Preoccupied, I missed the sarcasm of his tone and responded with a vague wave and a grateful, "That would be helpful, Jack. Thanks."

He swore, "That, darling, is where I draw the line. I will not be your assistant, you are, in fact, supposed to be mine, and yet, where were you when I could have used someone trailing after me with a change of clothes?"

But I wasn't listening. I had seen something that made my blood chill. There was a hold scratched into the boy's brain from his ear. I twisted his head for light and peered into his ear. Then I swore. Ignoring Jack, I leapt toward the hatch, snatching my bag as I went and careening out of the door without a backward glance.

I tore down the street, sprinting toward the slums. I had not removed even my bloodied apron still splattered with the drippings of the boy's liquified brain.

My urgency, and probably attire, was such that I was not stopped by even the darkest of thugs and I was free to zip through the byways and narrow alleys Mary Lightly had shown me. I thundered into the tenement and raced down the first floor hallway. I pounded on the door with the meat of my fist.

 _SLAM SLAM SLAM_

The broken door was pulled away and I pushed into the room.

"Doctor?" the girl Margaret asked. They were all curled around each other in nightclothes. A single lamp came to life.

"Line up, all of you, every one." I ordered.

Frightened of both my urgency and the my history with the family, I was obeyed. I took them one by one, peering into their ears. I found it in three of them, the youngest. Glistening wetly, lodged deep inside their ears. They stuck together like a bulbous slime. Eggs.

I set them each down in turn and scooped out the eggs that I could, depositing them in a screw top jar in my case. When I had gotten as many as possible I flushed their ears, first with water, spilling more eggs out onto the dirty floor, then with rubbing alcohol.

"Any of your ears hurt?" I asked them, "Or headaches?"

They shook their heads and I felt relief tug down my shoulders.

I pulled Margaret to me, "You saw how I did it, yeah?"

Numbly, she nodded.

"You work tomorrow?" I asked, I didn't know where she worked, but she was older than six or seven so it had to be somewhere.

She nodded.

I pulled a pound note out of my coat pocket. It was a fraction of what I had gotten for the Sooterkins and more than a year's wages for a girl in the slums. "You take this then, and I've got a job for you, alright?" I said.

Her body went rigid and tight, every muscle afixed like stone and leaning forward toward the bill. Her eyes were hungry. The eyes of every person in the room was on it.

Sharp, she said, "What is the job. I do it."

She had not even asked, although I had been hungry before, even with no siblings to feed. I knew that she would have done it even if I had asked her to crawl into the mouth of a tiger. "Go through your building, check the ears of the children, it will just be the young ones. If you find any, bring them to me. Mary Lightly knows the way, come tomorrow evening. You understand?"

"Yes," she said, "Yes, I understand. I do it. I get the money?"

I handed her the bill and she seized it, fingers lashing it out of my grip and tucking it against her chest.

I rose to leave but she pulled me back, skinny hand sharp on my elbow, "Miss Doctor, tell me what it was. What kill my brother?"

I answered her levely, "They are called Changelings, it burrowed into his brain and devoured it."

She flinched back and crossed herself, muttering beneath her breath. That is how I left her. I came up from the building to the dawn cresting through the dirty buildings. I reeked of blood and the filth of the tenement. No cab would stop for me, so I walked back to Jack's with weary feet.

I pulled open the door and began right up the stairs. My body felt leaden with the night's work, but there was more to be done before I could rest. I trudged across the hall and back up to the attic. The eggs had to be moved to a more permanent container, the boy's autopsy had to be finished, the creature had to be cut open, notes had to be taken.

Absurdly, the smell of combined decay and chemicals of the attic enlivened me. I set my case on a counter and carefully dug out my jars of eggs.

I noticed only how long the work was taking when I had to stop scribbling down notes to light the jets on the wall. Then again when I extinguished them as the sun again began to pour through the skylights. When I could barely keep myself upright I slumped into a chair and allowed my eyes to droop.

I could not have slept more than a few hours when I rolled back to my feet. There was just so much to do. I turned back to the boy, whose autopsy I had finished before my nap. On the rolling side table used to hold instruments needed on hand, was a cup of, now cold, tea and a raspberry scone. The comment was not lost on me.

I devoured it, regardless of what Jack meant by it, and went back to work.

His reply came much more quickly than I had expected. But three weeks after I had sent him the Changeling. I didn't know if it was standard practice to send this much to a colleague but I was helpless to it. The changeling had not, in the end, survived the death of its host, and I had performed a necropsy. I felt that this one had gone much better than my first as I followed to the letter all of my father's corrections.

Tucked away in my little flat, I read his response.

 _Dear John Mead,_

 _Once again, your sample reached me in tact, although I suppose even you could manage to get a corpse through the mail. I noticed when I began my own investigations that you have made some small improvement to your technique_ _with a scalpel. You are welcome for the instruction. However, please do inform me of your instructor as I do believe he deserves to be stripped of his doctorate for his clumsy tutelage. For your edification, if you do not dilute the formaldehyde your samples become utterly useless. Perhaps the next time you think you might be on to something you ought to alert a schoolboy to do your delicate work for you, for surely they would have better sense._

 _I will give you that the sample was an interesting find, although, this time, you are not quite right. The changeling is a creature of myth alone, as you might have gathered from its description. A creature than can replicate a child, indeed. Whatever is packed between you ears, boy? The creature you discovered goes by the name_ Reptilis Infantilium _and is poorly documented, but documented nonetheless. The most useful aspect of the infestation you uncovered was its proclivity to pass through family members as well as its proclivity for very young children._

 _The specimen itself was an interesting find. It is difficult to find them in their larval form, their only stage of development in which they excrete the ooze which dissolves brain matter. You mentioned that you retrieved a sample of this excretion but did not send it along. I would be interested in collecting it from you at this year's colloquium where I would speak to you regarding both this find and your last. I will have the time. I am attending, this year, without the company of my assistant. I expect to see you there._

 _Yours in professionalism,_

 _Doctor Pellinore Warthrop_

This letter too, had a partner.

 _My Anna,_

 _'I remembered her name, Will Henry, at long last. Anna's mother. It was Lola Mead. She...she made the papers. Not her, I suppose, so much as her companion in death. Vince Avery, he was a lieutenant of the Whyo gangsters. Rather high in their ranks. Oh, yes, Will Henry, our little Anna cut her teeth in a part of the city entirely controlled by such men. She boxed. I remember that she told me that. I would have liked to see it sometime. She would have made a brave monstrumologist. Can you imagine her at the annual brawl, Will Henry? That little terror. You know, I was thinking about her the other day, had she come to me a bit sooner and met John. John Chanler, I mean. She might have helped me keep up with him. Do you think, Will Henry? I would have enjoyed exacting a bit of well earned vengeance._

 _'I was talking about her mother. She was murdered, Anna told me as much. The gangster too, Vince Avery, someone spilled his innards onto the tenement floor, then cut down the woman. The newspaper says there was seen a little girl fleeing from the scene. Blood covering her tiny frame. Is that what she neglected to tell me, Will Henry?_

 _There was a Greek boy she mentioned. Aleixo. She said he was her neighbor. I thought to find him. To ask about her. I would like to know.'_

 _What wretched hell did you crawl from that you do this? Even I who know the state of your fetid heart spend the night hoping for your return. What sort of beast are you that you do this to him? Was it not enough to cut down your mother, must you have a matched set? Do you so hate him? Do you so hate me? You wretch. You vile blight. You stinking curse._

 _With affection,_

 _Your Will_

I lurched into action. Odd and foreboding though it might be that Will would not be coming with him. It did give me something of an opportunity, if a narrow one. The colloquium was fast approaching, less than two weeks away. The trip across the ocean itself would take six days out of my ten and that was if I left this instant. A ticket needed to be procured, a bit of shopping needed to be done.

Unease settling into my gut. Could I do that too? Could I continue to inflict myself? I wanted, desperately, to see him.

I tore back to Jack's letter clutched in my hand. I exploded into the house and hunted him out immediately. "Jack!" I exclaimed, finding him lounging with a book in the sitting room.

He arched an eyebrow and looked up from the pages, "Lee? I hardly see you around anymore, you have been a bit consumed of late."

I faltered, "Sorry, Jack."

He pushed back a stray lock of blonde hair, "It was not so much a reprimand as an observation."

"Well, I'm leaving again, for a few weeks."

I don't know if it was my imagination, or a trick of the light, but for a moment he looked annoyed. "If you do not remember, our original deal entailed your being useful to me."

I laughed, "It also reserved your right to shoot me between the eyes."

"And I still might."

I laughed at that and his eyes glittered, "If you killed me, who would tell you that your mustache looks ridiculous."

He narrowed his eyes, and hissed darkly, "I beg your pardon."

I smirked, "Just thought I ought to tell you, Jacky, it's not a good look."

His lip curled, "It is a dashing look, Warthrop, and you know it."

I flicked my knife out of my boot, "I could take care of it for you, if you want." I knew I had to hurry, but it wasn't often that I got under his skin and I wanted to revel a little.

Grim faced, he imitated me, drawing his much larger knife, "Come near me with that and I'll give you something a bit closer than a shave," he warned. But his eyes glinted with fun.

We threw at the same time, both a bit wide, so it was easy to dodge. He launched up from his chair at me with such suddenness that I squealed and fled, dropping my case in my flight.

He would have been faster than me, if we were in an open field and he were able to fully utilize his long legs. But I was far quicker. Ripping the removable skirt from my body I flung it back at him, giving me a moment of an edge. My frame was more slender and I could take tighter corners.

He nearly caught me, but his laughter gave him away and I ducked, swinging down on to the hardwood floor and sliding under the kitchen table. Softly, my blood was up. Not quite like a hunt, as I have said, I had no more fear of Jack Kearns, but I was exhilarated nonetheless. This was easy. This was Win or Lose. This was no messy death of a boy with a monster in his brain. Nor unfair letters to my father. Run or Be Caught was an easier choice than wound my father or wound myself.

Jack raced around the table to catch me but I retraced my path, this time vaulting the table with a quick flip of my body and landing again on my feet. I darted back to the sitting room and up the stairs. I had one moment where I was on the upper floor and he was not and I flung myself into a spare room. I slipped beneath a bed and lay in wait.

Silence echoed. The absolute silence of Jack in good form.

I watched the door. But I was being hunted by Jack Kearns, and he would not be given away by seeing his feet. From nowhere, I was tugged out from under the bed by the ankles, the air rent by Jack's laughter. I twisted around and had enough time to pull my feet up before he pounced.

I braced my feet on his chest and shoved him back as he bore down. He tipped backwards, but I also slipped across the floor from him. He fell to a knee, one hand keeping his chest off the floor and lashed out his other to seize me again by the ankle, pulling me back. His body shot forward and he had me, pinned irrevocably down.

We were both grinning and slightly out of breath.

I looked up at him, fire in his eyes and hair falling about his face, I made my choice in the rush of it, with my blood slipping through my veins, "Take me hunting, Jack."


	8. Come Home to Me

**Chapter 8: Come Home to Me**

Is there a version of events that would have crafted me differently? Would that I had gone to that Society luncheon at my father's side and left Jack on his ship. If I had, I would be at home. Will, my Will, would not write me letters of anger and lament, but whisper jokes that we had between each other. I might tease him over the girls that he kissed. Secured him in the feelings of brother and sisterhood. My father would wax on in his dry and lecturing tone, tell me everything that there was to know on the topic of the anatomical makeup of a creature's wing. Rather than in desperate grief about how he might have saved me. Would he give me the smallest of nods when I dissected something to his liking, "Good girl, Annalee." If something went wrong and one of us came close to being consumed would his facade of indifference have broken? Would I receive a kiss on my forehead and paternal arms around my frame? Would I be introduced with small measures of pride in his voice?

Will was right. Will was always right. I was a Fury that tormented. Winged and reeking of decay. Had I like them emerged from drops of blood? For surely I screeched into my father's pitiable ears, driving him to madness. I had dug myself in. How could I return now? Although, I envisioned it. I couldn't stop myself. The Prodigal Daughter. Would he even believe it? I knew with certainty, what Will would do. Throw something at my head, maybe knock me around a few more times. All things I well deserved. But what of my father? would I tell him of my crimes? Murderer. Cannibal. Deceiver. Traitor. How was it that I felt the last two outweighed the first? Would he hold me to him? Call me his?

 _Dr. Warthrop,_

 _I apologize, I will not be able to attend the colloquium this year. Nor, of course, may I submit anything for consideration as I am not yet a Monstrumologist. Please do not hesitate to discuss my findings. The credit, of course, goes to you, being the senior scientist and having so entirely eclipsed my discovery with your ability._

 _Your loyal servant,_

 _John Mead_

My hand had shaken when I had written it. It had sat staring at me from my desk. But I sent it and I did not go. It took everything inside of me. Maybe I had a modicum of heart that was not selfish. I sent it and returned to my dirty flat to sit in the dark. It constricted around me, bearing down. Would that dark find the weakest of my orifices? The corners of my eyes which had begun to leak? Would it snake inside and find the ice on my ribs? Is that how I would be consumed?

"Good Morning, Lee," Jack had said on the morning which the Colloquium was to begin. He was entirely chipper. I had woken to him with a gleaming grin, making breakfast.

"Morning," I had replied glumly. I felt, this morning, more like a sullen child than the poppy he cast me as.

He flipped a pancake and caught it in the pan deftly, "I have found it, Lee, our next quarry!" He winked at me. "This _this_ will get your blood up!" He laughed.

I wanted to forget that there was a meeting across the ocean where my father sat alone. Will Henry was somewhere else. He would be attending alone. Why would he be attending alone? "What's the hunt?" I asked when he tipped the first pancake onto my plate.

"Oh, it shall be a hunt for the ages!" He declared.

"Yeah, but what is it?"

He showed his teeth in a smile, "Oh, my girl, you shall see! You asked me to take you hunting and take you hunting I shall!"

"Can you tell me when at least?"

"June," He said.

"June?" I asked. It was so far away. So many months.

He hit me admonishingly with his spatula, "Good things come to those who wait, darling. Surely you can find something to keep you busy."

I spent more and more time out of the house. I did find a way to keep myself busy. The slums were filled with people who thought themselves beset by devils. Sometimes they were. I packaged them up, tidied up their human victims, sent them off to my father. Mary Lightly was devout in her deliverance of rumor. It took me into the dead of winter, until the colloquium was long done and cold had set in.

Jack had told me that he would be gone for Christmas, that he had something to attend to. Not that we had ever had a Christmas celebration. But there is something about the holiday that makes a lonesome heart atrophy. I wondered if my father remembered the season. If Will Henry was there to wish him a happy Christmas? Or wrap up a new set of microscope slides for him. I intended to spend mine in my flat, sitting with myself. At around nine at night, a knock interrupted me, a flat handed whapping on my door.

I got up and opened the door, hand resting on my new revolver that hung from my hip. A gift from Jack. I had gotten him a tortoiseshell comb that concealed a slim blade. He had been delighted.

Mary Lightly stood in the doorway, bare arms folded over each other against the cold. Next to her, Casimir, those dark Polish eyes big and bright.

"Mary?" I asked, "You got something for me?"

She stepped smartly inside, "Lemme in, yeah? Cold as a witch's little lady out there. God's glory though, lady doc, you do live inna dark."

"Sorry," I said, and lit a lamp. She looked better than she had before, no bruises. For awhile she had walked like her ribs were broken, but that too had healed. "Did you need something or…"

"Oh, no," she said, "Jus' saw you were 'ere and sittin' inna dark. We take Christmas off, you know, me and Cas. We was jus' sitting round and Cas said she wondered if ya spent the night broodin' away. So we thought we'd pop by. Merry Christmas!"

"Oh," I said startled, "Well...come in, Mary."

She scoffed, "E'rebody calls me Lights, she's Cas too, by the by, don' call 'er Casimir, she'll punch yah." Without invitation, she dropped into one of my chairs and yawned heftily.

"Is she doing alright, then?" I asked, reclaiming my seat.

"Oh, yeah, she bounced right back, but you can ask 'er, she got some English, jus' not when there are rats in 'er bits you know. So, lady doc, you mind 'f I call yah doc? Only Elizabeth Baron's a lil long you know and I know you ain't no certificated sort o' doctor, but you clean us up okay, thought it'd be alright if I'm gonna be spendin' time in yer livin' room eh?"

"You invited yourself in," I said, but I smiled and she tapped her finger against her nose as though she'd just proved a complex point. I shook my head, "Sure, call me whatever you want."

Her eyes lit up with mischief, "Anything I wan? You sure, doc? Well you said so, member that, yeah, liddle tits?"

"Hey!" I said, but I laughed.

"Not my fault, skinny ass," she continued, "You said." She raised her brows at me challengingly then broke down into laughter. It was contagious. From the bag she had slung over her shoulder she produced a bottle of cheap wine, "You bring it next time, huh, drink up."

She took a swig and handed the bottle off to me. I took it, hesitating only a moment before I knocked it back, swallowing a gulp of the biting liquor. It was wine only in the loosest sense. Swill more accurately captures the flavor.

Cas took a seat too. She had foregone the lurid paint for the occasion. Underneath she appeared more goddess than mortal woman. As if she were Aphrodite masquerading as a priestess. I felt that if I looked too long upon her I would break.

"You stare," she said in a heavy accent, but then mischief caught in those eyes, "Usually, I charge to stare so, but for you, I charge noting and I call it charity!"

"You might call it gratitude," I said, but I was smiling.

"Yah migh' shove it up yer ass!" Lights cackled. She took back the bottle and drank some down.

"You hungry?" I asked them. I ought to feed my Christmas guests, I thought. I was unreasonably touched that they had thought to come, only to visit.

They both exclaimed.

"Stay here, then," I said, "I'll be back with something."

I came back laden and we feasted, sitting on the floor alongside each other with drink and dinner.

"You won' be able ta keep us outta here if ya feed us like this," Lights said happily, knocking back more drink.

They were sweetness. Honey to the eyes and the heart. Brethren. If I had sisters it was them. Cas and Lights. The Young Whores. Casimir, she told me meant Peace. Light and Peace. My sisters. Compliments to my Dark and Dread.

"I was nearly a whore," I said. I did not know what brought it from my lips.

"No you were not!" Cas said, clapping a slender hand to her sensuous lips, English was still half foreign to her and she spoke slowly. But it did not make her sound stupid, more like an oracle, she had to receive her words before she could say them, "You have the money! You are a doctor, yes!"

"I was a girl, eleven, my mother was hungry."

Lights shrugged, "Well, if she had to eat, didn't she?"

I laughed, "Yes, she did. She was only very hungry."

Cas gave me a very serious look over, she took my chin between her elegant fingers and turned my head this way and that. Her eyes were deep, then she said, "If you were whore, I want that you to know," She paused here, serious, then her face broke into laughter, "you starve!"

Lights fell over giggling, "Yer like a big sharp bird!"

Cas laughed also, tapping my nose, "Good thing you just kill monsters, yes?"

Lights took back the bottle.

"How old are you?" I asked when we were a quarter of the way through the bottle.

She laughed, "Fifteen I spose. Sixteen maybe by now. What 'bout you?"

"Eighteen," I said, "Just turned, 'bout a week ago."

"Well happy goddamn birthday, lady doc."

"I'm not a doctor."

She snorted, "You ain't no lady neither."

I looked at Cas, 'You?"

She set her shoulders regally, "I am forever!" Then her demeanor broke and she only laughed. Suddenly she shot forward, "Doc, you let me braid your pretty hair!"

Why the hell not? I let her, and her deft fingers pulled intricate designs into my hair. I closed my eyes, savoring the soft fingers. But between us, it was Lights whose hair stood above the par. Glitteringly golden brown. Like amber in the lamp light it shone.

We ate and drank full to bursting, until we lay on the floor with our heads together, our hair mixing. Mine a tousled raven black, Cas' unbelievably thick and nearly red in its mahogany, Lights' that color befitting her name, streaks of gold in woodsy brown.

Unwholesome women always seemed to come in threes did they not?

I got back to Jack's in the midmorning, smelling of cheap wine, Lights' noxious perfume, and the slums. My head hurt. I slunk through the door, hoping to trundle upstairs to my bed and spend a few hours sleeping horizontally. I had a crick in my neck from dozing off in my chair.

Unfortunately, I ran into Jack on the stairs, back from wherever he had gone. He swore, and recoiled from me, "Where they hell have you been all night? You smell like a whorehouse."

"Sorry, Jack," I muttered, running a hand through my hair and unsuccessfully stifling a yawn. But I was not sorry. I did not care how I smelled. My head stung but for the first time in many days, my heart was full. "We should go to Columbia," I said, "Finish that hunt we planned."

"No," he replied briefly.

"Why not, Jack?" I asked with a tawdry laugh, "Is the mighty Doctor John Kearns afraid of the ocean?"

"No," he said again, lips turning down, "I really had thought I had told you how intolerably difficult it would be to cart a girl through that forest."

I drew back, indignation raising it's head, "You don't need some girl, you have me."

An eyebrow arched, "Are you taking offense that I _don't_ want to use you as bait?"

"You don't want to?"

He did not answer me, only spat, "Go take a bath, you smell foul."

"Merry Christmas, Jack."

He rolled his eyes, "Merry Christmas, Lee."

 _John Mead,_

 _I was disappointed that you did not come to New York. I did think that I related quite clearly that I was interested in discussing the finer points of your discoveries. I will allow the mistake, for we are not well acquainted, but I do not speak falsehoods. Your discoveries are of utmost import and I must acquire more details. I will harbor no dispute. I have included a boarding pass I procured for you to bring you to New York. I will meet you there. If you are not there, you will rue it._

 _Doctor Pellinoe Warthrop_

What could I do? Something was not right. That letter did not sound like Pellinore Warthrop. My hand was forced. I had to go. It had not even been written in Will's hand. It was scrawled in his horrific handwriting and barely readable. Will, where were you? Why was he alone?

I came downstairs to Jack, who lounged on a divan.

"Jack?" I said. I could barely say it. I warred with myself. All it had taken was the scrawled out letter for me to spiral back. I should not see him. I should let my father mourn.

"Lee?"

I had intended to tell him that I was going to New York, that I would be home soon. I had personal business. Instead I just looked at him.

"Have you gone catatonic?" He asked.

"When are we going hunting?"

"The spring, June, I said as much, I believe I have found quite the mark."

"Will you tell me?"

He pouted, "Can you not allow me to surprise you anymore?"

I was a pathetic thing. I put a knee on the divan and looked at him. He pulled me forward by the hand and I fell against his chest. He pulled and arm about me. The residual cells of my body left over from the shipwreck felt that we ought to be swaying on the waves. That was the last time we had sat like this, with his pulse beneath my ear. My voice was a desperate whine, "Why didn't you eat me, Jack? On the boat?"

"I told you-"

"You lied."

His eyes narrowed, "It ought to be enough for you that I didn't. Would you like me to make up for it now?" His lips parted, he showed me his teeth. When did they get so white?

"Jack?"

"Have you ever known a lion who forwent eating to spare the feelings of a gazelle?"

"Yes," I said, "You did."

"Ah, but you are not a gazelle."

He smelled good. I put my arms around him. "Will thinks that I am a Fury."

"What do you think that you are?"

I had this answer, "A siren." But a new thought had come to me. A changeling perhaps, fit me better. I took the shape of a child and, so disguised, devoured my parents hearts.

He laughed low against my hair, "Shall I tether myself to the mast then? That I might hear your song and not succumb?"

"It must not be much of a song, you won't use me as bait anymore," I said against his chest.

"Well I did not mean that as a slight, certainly, if it means so much to you. Sing away, lure in the wayward fools that I might feast."

"That was the deal."

"Hmm." He sat for many moments with his arms about me, his pulse on my cheek, "There were no terms in our deal which dictated you carry me over your back, up the side of a ship, into a lifeboat." His voice was softer. I had not realized that it had meant something to him to be saved. He had never said.

"Why did you feed the marrow to me?" I asked.

"On the boat?"

"Yes," I said, turning my head so that my face was against his throat. When I spoke, I laid my teeth against the soft flesh. I remembered how that marrow had tasted. Remembered his fingers against my lips. I remembered too how longingly he had looked at it before allowing me to suckled it from his offered fingertips.

"You were hungry."

"So were you."

"Yes," he replied. He leaned his head back minutely exposing more of his skin to my teeth, "I was so very hungry."

I could feel his pulse. It lay beneath such thin flesh. I did not have to imagine how it would feel. I knew. I could recreate perfectly the metallic heat of his blood. I could also recreate the deadness of his eyes. They way he would become meat. I lay my forehead onto his shoulder.

If I was to be a monster, at least I did not have to be a monster alone. Jack, who came home covered in blood. Jack who taught me first how to bleed someone dry. Jack who fed me the marrow of a still living man. He let me lay my teeth against his throat and did not flinch.

"What sort of thing are you, Jack Kearns?" I asked, "That hunts with sirens and keeps one in his house?"

He had no answer in words. But he snapped his teeth beside my ear.

The plans were laid. We would not go to Columbia. Jack was insistent and so I relented. But he had heard whispers that she was back. _Her_ he called it. But would not tell me what it was. Only to be ready. To practice. To sharpen. I did. There was two months before my rendezvous with my father. That would not happen until the end of the winter. Jack and I would leave in June. There was time.

I started boxing again. I had thought to do it only to keep myself at the edge. But that bite. The rush of knuckles against my cheek. The euphoria of my own crunching into flesh. Cas and Lights came to watch me and cheer me on. They came also to place bets. It had been Lights' idea, she had a flare for the dramatic. When I had told her my plan, she almost smothered me with her own designs.

We were in my flat, all three of us lying near enough the window that we could look out upon the stars. "I am going to box in the street." I said.

"Whatchu doin' that for?" Lights asked.

"I like the rush," I said. And I was sick of my limpid muscles. I wanted them back raw and hard, "I'll dress as a boy."

She had sat up, sitting over me, her perfume cloying, "Oh no ya won'!" She sang, "No ho, no thing!" She pushed Cas, "Run home and get tha' bag o' yers, go on!"

Cas had come back with a dirty carpet bag. They stripped me out of my doctor's clothing, not without considerable mocking over my 'skinny ass' and 'boy tits' and put me in something else. Pants, for who could I box without them, high waisted with twin lines of buttons down the front. A white blouse, sleeves rolled up like a man working in a sweatshop. Together they braided up my hair and painted black about my eyes that came up in sharp points.

"Jus' like an Egyptian in those adventa stories!' She said, "See, look atcha! You know if ya look like a girl they'll think you'll be worse. Yer good, yeah?"

"It's been awhile."

"You'll be good. Make us some money, yeah?"

I did make them money. She had known right, They gave me terrible odds.

My first was a man twice my size. My blood sang. I was back. I played my part. It would only work once, I had better use it. I was a siren after all. I stumbled, my lip trembled. He shot in, too slow, leaving himself open. I howled to the skies and set upon him. To the marrow my bones trembled with the euphoria. Oh yes. Oh yes. It was this that had driven me to Jack. I had almost forgotten the feel of it. When I came up victorious, blood ran across my knuckles.

Cas laughed when I came back to them and Lights shrieked in delight. I had done them well. It became our evening tradition. If there was no nasty creature in the dark for me, I would become it, destroying the men who stood against me. One after another. My sisters, a different set of monsters entirely, cheered me from the sidelines. My muscles came back and I felt more like myself.

It was there, locked in a tete-e-tete with my two sisters in arms when I saw Jack. He saw me also at the same time.

His dark eyes flickered to the girls on either side of me, to the now smeared paint on my eyes and his face became so abjectly befuddled it was hard not to be amused.

"Gimme a minute," I said to them and I crossed the street to him.

"Boxing again, I see," he said, "And...keeping... odd company." I am not certian I had ever seen him this close to lost for words. He seemed mystified. As though my company was unrectifiable in his mind. His eyes darkened as he looked back on them.

"Did you see the fight?" I asked.

"No, I must admit I missed it. Had I known it was you I would be been more observant."

I grinned, "I won."

"So it seems. And your friends?" He stuttered over the word.

"Lights and Cas," I said, "They're just friends." But they were more weren't they? The Aphrodites to my Artemis. "What are you doing here?"

He put on offense, "Am I not allowed to wander my own city?"

"Sure," I said, "Just thought you preferred Whitechapel."

"I can't expand my horizons?"

"Will you do a favor for me, Jack?" I asked.

"For you I might consider it."

"Don't do it here."

He shrugged, "As you wish, my sweet little pugilist." And so our territories were marked out officially. Cohabiting monsters we might have been, but our hunting grounds were our own.

I abstained from all but the basest food during the passage to New York and by the time I reached the American shore my face looked harrowing over feminine. A light application of khol to my brows and I was almost boyish.

This was not fair to him. This was cruel, in fact. But I could not help myself. I unloaded my things at the hotel and caught a cab to where we were to meet. There was a restaurant where he had staged it. I had not heard of the place, New York changed too fast for me, who had not lived there in years, to still know the names. When I found it it was to discover a dark and sordid place. It was too familiar, too close to Five Points where I had been born and cut my teeth. Where I had had my first steps and my first slaughterIt was not a place wherein I could imagine Pellinore Warthrop.

My heart fluttered under my jacket and I slipped in at the back, taking a quiet seat and beginning to look for him. If I saw Will, I would leave. That is what I told myself. I longed to see Will. I scanned the tables for those dark eyes and familiar, raven hair. Was there anything I would not have given to also see the boy with sandy hair and an earnest smile? How long ago had he greeted me at my father's door by flinging his body around mine? What had I done?

And then there he was, sitting at the bar. His body was not suited for it, hunched over. But God there was a wildness about him, something that was not entirely human. A feel more than an observation. The inclination that at a moment's notice he might turn to a beast under my gaze.

He turned his head up and I swiftly looked down, but not fast enough. I could feel his eyes bearing down on me. Unsteadily, I looked back up to meet his gaze. It was unrelenting and unfathomably dark. It held me in thrall. Slowly, deliberately, he raised a hand and crooked his finger at me. Well, what was I to do? I rose and crossed the room to him. My heart thundered so much blood through my veins I thought I might pass out right there on the floor.

What accounting was there for the hunger in his eyes? What sort of hunt put a flame which blazed so mightily? Something not altogether well resided in the cast of his skin and the tapping of his fingers against the bar. He should not be here. Where was Will? Surely WIll would not have let him leave in such a state. He had proper clothes on, at least, but there were other things. Eyes with dark purple circles under them. His hair was wild, as though it had been run through by his fingers innumerable times. Why wasn't Will with him? What possible darkness had descended that he was writing his own letters? That he sat alone without his assistant.

My father gave a fragment of a smile and turned in his chair to face me. "You look well, Mr. Mead," He said the name like an invocation. Fire was in his eyes, his words were clipped, deliberate, precise. To be their recipient I felt more a creature beneath his knife than a colleague.

"You as well, Dr. Warthrop." Although it was a lie.

His eyes roved over me, "You and your particular proclivity for urban hunting."

The other patrons moved away from us. Uncomfortable with the sparks of beastly hunger between the preeminent Doctor Warthrop and the tender young stripling who shivered before him. I could not look away.

"You did not grow up in London," he said. It was a statement and, as I had no British accent, not one that I could refute, "Come now, we are leaving."

"Sir?" I asked, "We are leaving? Now?"

He was already up, "Yes, come now, there is much to be done."

"Done? Doctor Warthrop, sir, I am afraid I don't understand." I had suspected that there would be something more, that he had wanted more than to talk to a barely proved scientist about barely important findings. But I had expected a bit more exposition.

He sneered back, "Of course you don't, I have not explained it yet."

I laughed, "You don't want to talk about my findings, do you?"

"Why would I care to talk about your findings? No, I am going to put you to much better use."

"What makes you think that I will play along?" I asked. Of course, I _would_ play along, but I wanted his reasoning.

We were out of the restaurant now and on the dark night time street. He turned to me, swung around really. Madness lived in his eyes with the fire. I could see it dance. Not an unhinged madness. Not the sort where you mistake a book for a bowling pin. The madness bred from desperation. He drew his revolver in a swift motion and pressed it against the soft flesh of my side. In a low voice, a hum, a caress upon the ears he said, "If you do not, I'll shoot you."

"Easy, Warthrop," I said, "Whatever you need."

"Good boy," he said, and holstered his piece.

"So, what are you after?" I asked, "Something in the city, yes?"

"Some _one_ in the city. You will help me find him."

"Because of my proclivity for urban hunting?" I asked.

He nodded.

"So, he's in the slums, this fellow? That's why you need me?"

"He is indeed, the Five Points neighborhood, you know it?"

My stomach clenched into an icy pit, "Yes, I know it. Whatever could you need there?" but I knew, or I thought that I did. Although I hoped against my better reasoning that I was wrong. I wanted him to say, ' _There have been reports of bloody killings there,' 'There is a rumor of something strange.',_ He did not, of course.

"There was a boy who lived there, he would be a man now. He is a Greek named Aleixo."

No. No. No. He was supposed to be moving on. He ought to be in his basement laboratory dissecting something foul. He should not be here. He should not be stalking toward the slums of New York in the dark chasing shadows. Chasing my shadow. I had barely known him at all, how could I have had so much impact?

"Where is your assistant?" I asked, "Where is Mr. Henry?"

He grew dark, "He refused to come. He does not share my hypothesis."

"Your...your hypothesis? What do you mean, sir?"

"That is not your concern, boy, find me the Greek."

"Sure, sure, but we need to change, if we go to Five Points like this we won't last half a minute. Why don't you dress down a bit and meet me back here in the morning, its stupid to do this at night."

"I will not leave you. You will not come back."

"I'll come back, Warthrop, at first light." I turned and began to walk off, "Trust me, Warthrop, and don't bother aiming that gun at me, you aren't going to shoot."

Trust me, Warthrop? I am eating you alive. How could I?

I did come back, dressed more like a ruffian. I could have argued that it would have been a good time to leave, but I had no doubt that if I didn't come back he would have run off into my old haunts alone. I also had no doubt that if he did that he'd be dead in a sewer by morning.

My father had heeded my warning and was looking very odd indeed in workman's clothing. His body was taut and ready. His eyes shown with the fire of the hunt.

"Ready, Warthrop?" I asked. But how dare I? Why would I not simply tell him that I was here, right before him? There is no need to chase after me, dad. I'm here. Was it that I wished to see how far he would go in my pursuit? Or was I just the fetid wretch Will had accused me of being?

He had no words of introduction, he dug his hand into his pocket and withdrew a slip of paper, he handed it to me, "She used to live here."

"She?" I asked, almost slipping, but catching myself, "Thought we were going after a Greek boy."

He waved away my question, "He is only a lead. He was her neighbor."

"Sure, sure,' come one then. I could take him to the building. I could have taken him in the dark, I could have taken him blind and deaf.

He followed behind me, silent as a wraith. But his eyes were lit by a backlit flame. He buzzed with unusable energy.

"So," I said as we walked, knowing it was not a fair line of questioning, "This she that you're looking for. Your dead daughter?"

He flinched, "She is not dead." He said it like he was cursing. As if by spitting it with enough ferocity he could make it so.

"That's your hypothesis then? That Henry doesn't agree with?"

"Yes," He relented, "Will Henry told me I was mad. He would not come."

I shrugged, "What evidence do you have?"

He spun on me, the revolver came out again, "It is no business of yours! You will lead me to the Greek boy and go."

I held up my hand, "Look, tell me, just tell me about it so I can help. I'll help you." But I was not helping. I was giving the reins to a madman and supplying him with a faster horse. "If I don't know what I'm looking for, I can't help."

He straightened to his full, and not unformidable, height. He stared down at me with his dark ravenous eyes. "You will find the boy and nothing more."

So I took him to my old building, up the stairs to the unit wherein my career as a monster began. I went one door beyond it, where Aleixos had lived with his four brothers and his parents. I knocked. I wondered if Aleixos answered, if he would recognize me right off and give up the game.

He did not answer. Nor any Greek. And the Dutch woman who did had never heard of him. The family that moved out before they moved in had been German. The building kept no records. In ten minutes the lead that had caused Pellinore Warthrop to convince a young scientist to cross the Atlantic to chase was dead. There would be no boy to tell him about his dead child. I could see the news slip under his skin. I could see the way it drove him down.

Outside the tenement building he roved back and forth, pacing on the sidewalk, hands behind his back, "The shipwreck." He was talking to himself. Did he even remember I stood there? He might have forgotten anything in the world was around him, "Her ship. The sailor...the sailor. He said there was a siren. A mermaid. He said that she sang. He was delusional. There was no siren. It was her. He said that she was on a lifeboat. She lived. She must have lived. She cannot be dead. She is right here. I am just too foolish to know where to look."

"Sir," I said unsteadily. He jumped and looked at me, eyes pits that devoured, if Will were here, he would have knocked out my teeth. "Sir...if she had lived, why would she be here? Why would she not have come back to you?"

Pellinore Warthrop came undone before my eyes. His tall body lurched and shook. His eyes became not that of a man. He twisted toward me, a viper in the body of a man, "Why?" he thundered, "Would she ever come back to _me_?"


	9. The Sundering and the Drawing Together

**Chapter 9: A Hunt for the Ages**

I am not proud of the thing that I did. I took the train after him to New Jerusalem. I haunted his steps up Harrington Lane. I sat beneath the library window and I listened.

"Did you find the boy?" It was Will. His voice was deeper, the voice of a man. I could see his shadow cross the window, broad shouldered.

My father, shoulders low, "No…No, Will Henry… I did not find the Greek boy. Nor anything else."

"And your hypothesis?"

His voice hardened, "My hypothesis has not changed. It will not change. She cannot be dead." A foul screech came from the house, not a sound that a man can make.

"Sir?" Will crossed the window again, then his voice, softer, "Sir. I should not have let you go alone."

Muffled slightly, as though pressed against cloth, perhaps, against a shoulder, "Don't be foolish, Will Henry. Your expedition was of utmost import. It could not be delayed…" He pause, "It is I who should not have let you go alone. I cannot renegg on my promise of tutelage when you are so close. I am sorry about your expedition."

There was quite a pause, "My expedition was a success, sir."

"What? Really?"

Sarcastic, "There are a few things that I can accomplish without you."

"Oh, Will Henry, I shall have to begin calling you Doctor Henry soon."

"Don't get ahead of yourself, sir."

I had rubbed the khol from my brows, I had changed out of the clothes I had worn as John Mead. I could just go inside. But how could I go now? When perhaps he was beginning to heal? These arguments had begun to feel weak. Pellinore Warthrop would be better if I came inside. But what was it that I owed to Pellinore Warthrop?

Being back, being here, it made anger burn beneath my skin.

He had taken me in, out of guilt. He had forgotten I was there by the next morning. He had walked by me as though I was a shade upon the sill. I had been allowed in his home to appease his own guilt at my creation. This man who grieved over me had not even come home in time to see me off to school. Had sent me letters that brought me closer to tears than relief. His grief, as Will's letters had made clear, was not over me. How could the be over me, he knew nothing of me. His guilt was over his own failure, that he had been given a child and lost it. That he proved a waste of a father. His personal failure to keep a girl alive. That he had made me out of his own selfishness and lost me by the same path. Let him suffer. Let him sob and shake and wither. He was a coward. A selfish coward who had bred a selfish coward and let him rue it. What did I ever owe him? Why should I tether myself to this man? Will was an unfortunate casualty to be sure.

But he would not have allowed me to leave again if I came back. Surely, not with Jack. And, as I did every time we were too long parted, I missed Jack. The man who knew the labyrinthine dark of my heart and did not draw back. Who had seen my teeth stained red and smiled.

But still, I did not come away from the house.

"Will Henry," his voice was soft. Softer than I had ever heard, "Will Henry, what will you do when I have taught you all there is to teach you?"

Will's was soft too, but edged with playfulness, "Are you telling me there comes a day that I am as competent a monstrumologist as you?"

"Don't get ahead of yourself, Will Henry."

"I know what you're asking me," Will said, his voice becoming serious.

"How would you? I have not yet asked it. Are you telling me your single solo expedition has rendered you a reader of minds?"

"I always know what you're asking, sir."

A small laugh, "Yes, you seem to."

"So...to answer you, sir. No."

"No, Will Henry?" Warthrop asked, "No? No, what?" I could barely hear their voices they were so low. They must have been standing close.

"No, sir," he repeated, "I won't leave you. I will never leave you."

I could see their silhouettes painted on the glass. I saw Warthrop come forward in a rush. Heard a muffled noise of surprise from Will.

"Sir? What-"

Made sharp with fear, "Will Henry, I- I am - I am not thinking correctly - I have-"

I watched his silhouette begin to flee. Watched Will reach out and pull him back, "Sir. Pellinore."

This was not something I had any business eavesdropping on. I slid away from the window. Anger and relief lived in me in equal measures. Go forth, Warthrop with your boy Henry. It was time to stop lurking in shadows and spying on fragments of your lives. I was born in a rat infested stairwell as a product of your grief and selfishness. I had never had any business imposing upon your life.

Something came free in my heart the night that I fled Harrington Lane. Ice had coated my ribs as long as I could remember, but when I walked away, it broke off. It did not melt. No. It just became a part of each of my drops of blood and embedded in every fleck of skin.

I returned to London. To my own life. To Jack.

I did not return right away to Jack's house, home, when I returned to London. I stopped first at that lowest of tenement buildings, I knocked on Cas and Light's door. The journey back had been a difficult one. I had been so sure of myself when I left Harrington Lane and so unsure as I travelled back. I felt for the first time as if I had left them. As though I could not go back. The child I had been had begun to wither and her small cries to be returned to her father grew ever dimmer. But I had fallen, somewhere on the way back into melancholy. I wanted my sisters before Jack, to put surety back into my steps.

It was Cas who answered, "Yes, _lekarz"_ she said, it was Polish, it meant doctor, "Yes, you are back, you come to say hello to your two beautiful whores!"

Lights came forward and tugged me in. The musky smell of sex pervaded the stuffy room that already smelled of mold and rot. Lights beamed at me, "You been gone a long time, glad you made it back in all one piece, yeah?"

"It was a waste," I said by way of introduction.

"What was?"

"Everything I did. I sent it away to. To this…" I hesitated but I landed on the truth, "To my father. Under a different name. But he was only using me. I am not a monstrumologist. I don't know why I ever thought that I was. It meant _nothing_."

I don't know what I expected. Sympathy? I did not get it. A heavy handed blow struck down across my cheek. I staggered back. Cas reeled her hand back again and struck once more, she slapped me across the face again and again and again. Then, stilling immediately she said, "You say it mean nothing. You save me. So I mean nothing?"

"No that isn't-" I tried to defend myself but she struck me again.

"NO! I not nothing! I am EVERYTHING! I am Casimir and I am forever! I mean EVERYTHING!" Her voice was majestic, never shrill. A goddess incarnate.

Lights folded her arms, "Well, Cassy, don't get too full o' it. You're just a whore." She laughed.

Cas shook and struck again, I let the blow fall, "No. I am Mary Magdalene. I am Dzydzilelya, of the old gods!" She arched her back, one hand struck against her breast, the other clutched aggressively at her crotch, "To hell with you, lekarz, to hell!"

Was I so much my father incarnate? That I had forgotten she lived on while I went away. That her young heart was filled with everything that filled my own.

Lights laughed at her, "Don't gotta be so dramatic, Cas, she's jus' mad at her old man. Ain't you ever been mad at your old man?"

Cas drew herself back, wrapping her ratty shawl around her shoulders, "Yes, I suppose. She should say that. She say, 'Go to hell, papa,' not that I am nothing. I hear all day I am nothing, I don' need to hear from friend, doktar."

"I'm sorry, Cas, really," I said, "I didn't mean that. I just meant that I don't think I am meant to be a scientist."

Cas lurched forward again and seized me by the chin, she looked at me. I believed then that she was Dzdzilelya the goddess. Her brown eyes burned and her dark hair might have been floating, "You listen. Papas are gold and papas are shit. No matter." Her other hand danced across the front of my skirt, pressed between my legs. I lurched in surprise but I did not draw away. She had more, "So you got something between those legs," she curled her fingers and I gasped, "that men can pay coin for and think they pay for you." Her fingers pressed more firmly, "What your papa thinks means nothing. What men think mean nothing. You are stars, you are Jezda, witch in the woods, you who eats the hearts of men and hunt in dark."

I shuddered under those heavy Polish eyes that reflected in a wild blaze the flickering light of the lantern. How could she know that I ate the hearts of men? I parted my lips to ask her, and she pressed hers against my own. Her mouth was soft and demanding, for a moment, I succumbed. I had never been kissed before. I did not want it to stop.

Too soon she pulled herself away from me, she was laughing, eyes glittering in mischief, "You see. I am everything. I take even the hunter in dark."

Lights took one look at me, leaning slightly forward, breath stolen, and she lost herself to laughter, clutching her sides, tears rolling down her face, "You look like a broke john!" She reached out and Cas and Lights clutched each other in a trick well accomplished.

I scowled and crossed my arms, feeling very duped.

Cas rolled her eyes, "If you do not like it maybe then you tell us when you go off for month and month. We worry, yes."

I ran a hand through my hair and muttered, "Not a great incentive."

After that, it took Lights nearly ten minutes to calm down.

But they had done it, purged me of my melancholy. Cas had been right, papas were gold and papas were shit. It didn't matter if he was right or wrong. It did not matter. I would do as I wished.

Jack was in true form under the June sun, flecked with sea spray. His golden hair gleamed with it, his eyes shone dark. We were going to Greece. To fight the monster of monsters. I had not seen him move with more lift to his step.

"This is the hunt, Lee," He said, many times, " _The hunt._ "

I could barely keep my eyes off of him, he was like a lion dressed as a man, set upon his prey. He stalked about the ship, unable to remain still, his heart and eyes alight.

I was still, I stood on deck and looked out passed the waves. I could nearly feel my muscles solidify as I remained, for hours sometimes, unmoving. Whales passed before me and the occasional fin of a shark. Meanwhile Jack stalked in circles about me, unable to keep himself in one place.

He had finally told me where we were going, although what we were after was still only given to me in hints. Our destination was Cape Matapan on the southernmost tip of Greece. Sparti, the city that had once been the city of warriors lay directly to the north. But we would remain at our berth.

"You would know what it was we hunted if you had been a bit more dedicated to your studies, my darling," Jack purred, tantalizing.

"I'd also know if you would tell me rather than lead me around by the nose."

"Now where is the fun in that?" He asked with a rakish smirk, "We will be docking soon, I'll tell you then."

He darted off the boat like an adolescent when we docked, leaving me to carry both his bag and my own. The only thing he remembered was the case containing his brand new rifle.

I followed after him, a bag over each shoulder, cursing him playfully under my breath. He led us to a quaint little bed and breakfast owned by an aging Greek couple. Jack, apparently, spoke Greek with some fluency. When I caught up he was winking at the wife, who must of been in her seventies, and kissing the tips of her fingers. She swatted him on the nose, but she had a rosy smile on her face. He looked back at me and gave me a wink.

We were led inside with much fanfare and given our room, a single room whose window overlooked the Grecian beach.

As soon as the door was closed, Jack whirled on me, arms outstretched, "Alright, my sweetling, would you like to know what I have found for us?"

"Yes, Jack, I've been pretty patient but that is running out." I tossed both bags on the bed and he set down his rifle.

He stalked around me, "Beneath us, underneath this entire city is a warren of caves that drip with the spray of the Ionian Sea. They call them the Matapan Caves," he purred into my ear, "Visited by Orpheus in legend as he chased his sweet love Euridice, and by Herakles. Do you know to what they lead?"

I did not, of course, and he knew it, so I waited for him to complete another circuit around me that he might bend low into my ear, his hot breath spilling across it, "The Underworld."

"Come on, Jack, " I said, "you haven't been giddy as a schoolboy for months looking for the entrance to a place I know you do not believe in."

"Hmm, yes," he said, "You are right, of course, we are not after the Underworld, not yet anyway, I was merely setting the scene."

"Alright, scene set, what's the hunt?"

"The father of monsters, Typhoeus and his wife Echidna."

I turned, my smirk inches from his, "Might you mean the mother of monsters, Echidna, and her husband Typhoeus?"

He laughed, "The first monsters, my girl, the first. Can you even imagine?"

"That they exist? No, I cannot."

He scowled, "You think I would bring you so far for naught? I have reliable sources." He pouted at me, "Don't you trust me?"

He had asked me that one time already, when I was a child and he was using me as bait, I had answered quickly with a sure 'no.' I answered just as quickly now and with as much surety, "Yes."

He beamed that sunshine smile, "Excellent, we will be off in the morning. I shan't be able to sleep."

"What's the plan?" I asked, "Get you a vantage point and I lure them out? Like before?"

He shifted our bags over and reclined on the bed, "No, not at all. I will need you hunting them at my side, they are too clever to be baited. We go in together, side by side."

I reclined beside him, looking over at him, his eyes were closed, I shifted over and lay my long hair over his chest, pressing my face against him, "Is that what we are to each other, Jack? People who go into the dens of monsters side by side?"

His hand dropped into my hair, his fingers pulling out the tangles in slow pulls, working them from scalp to tip, "Yes, it seems that we are."

The next day dawned hot and humid, the Greek sun seeing us, armed to the teeth, climbing down the rocky slips of the coast into the first of the den of caves that sliced into the edge of the continent.

Inside I could feel the residual mythology, the weight of human superstition that had curdled in the dark reaches of the place and made itself home. Jack did not light a lantern and I did not request one. We were creatures of the dark.

No noise rose from our boots as we shivered through the shadows, but nor did noise come from the cave, except for the occasional rustle of bat's wings or the slap of the surf. We wound into the caves, ever deeper, until the black was absolute. The salt smell of the sea began to lessen by degrees and a new odor snuck inside of us, a sickly sweet and familiar odor of human rot.

Only then did we light lamps, each of us at the same time, without consulting the other.

Light flared into life and flickered against the wall. My gasp was followed by Jack's low exhalation. The cave was awash in blood. Old blood and new, smeared across the ceiling and dripping into puddles on the floor. Broken shards of bone littered the step, unrecognizable chunks of meat bobbing here and there in pools of rotting blood. Flies buzzed thickly about the walls and maggots squirmed in writhing white masses.

"Well, something lives here," I said, perhaps unnecessarily.

Down the twisting caves, deeper still into the earth we heard it, a tender wailing. The sound of a human woman, lost and afraid.

Jack grinned, "Well now, that sounds like something."

"You thinking a trick?" I whispered, "Or viable bait?"

"We shall see, won't we."

We could not extinguish our lamps, the darkness was too complete and the caves were too winding to traverse them without the aid of vision. We moved slow, staying to the dry paths where our boots would not squelch.

The bloodshed continued this way, but it became older, the blood tacky and bones picked clean. I saw Jack's fingers twitch on his rifle.

The wailing was loud now, behind the next bend. Here, we extinguished our lamps and fell upon our bellies, crawling forward despite the grime on the floor.

We felt along the wall to the turn then tucked ourselves behind a rocky outcropping to look into the cave beyond. I could not hear him, but I felt the steady rise and fall of Jack's breathing beside me.

The cave before us was wide and tall, both stalactites and stalagmites piercing the air between them so the entire thing looked like some terrible maw.

In the center of the room there lay a woman, half cloaked in the dark, she had a lamp with her, but it had fallen to the ground. Her dark hair was splayed about her and it was from her that the horrific moans came. From somewhere behind her, we could hear slithering.

Excitement raced through my blood, the thrill of the hunt pulsing in my heart. I glanced over at Jack, his face a hair's breadth from mine, and showed my teeth in a grin. He, leonine, grinned back. This was the hunt. _The Hunt_. That is how I remember it too.

We didn't talk about helping the woman. It was not a decision so much as something neither I nor he even thought of. I nodded at him and began to slide forward on my belly, scooting closer to the light. He stayed behind, rifle ready on his shoulder.

The slithering must have been coming toward the woman and, with such tempting bait so graciously given to us, how could we resist using the trap? I slid on my belly between stalagmites, knife held in my teeth. I stopped every few feet to listen. The slithering grew louder still, the slow sway of scales against damp rock.

There was peace to this, and rhythm. The blood crushing through my veins on pulse with my heart. The moaning of the woman. The swishing of the monster. He was, as always, silent, but I could nearly feel the movement of Jack's breathing still against my shoulder although he was now quite far behind me.

I was not afraid. I could no longer remember the taste of fear. But even the panic that sometimes struck before a fight was not there. If something reared up at me, beyond the scope of a knife there would be gunfire that would spark from behind me. Bullets sizzling over my shoulders against my adversary.

A strangled cry erupted from behind me and I flipped onto my back to look. The cave was alight in haunted scarlet flames. They spewed forth in a jet, arching across the ceiling and throwing it into sharp contrasts of red light and grey shadow.

The flame came from the mouth of a terrible creature. Twenty feet tall at least, its chest and head the corded musculature that was almost that of a man, but far more bestial. From his mouth five inch teeth that came to jagged points protruded and those eyes, black as the night, glittering in the light of his firey breath. But this was not his most monstrous quality. Twin serpents wound out where legs ought to be, thrashing against the walls in terrible smashing blows.

The colossus' hands, if they could be called hands, were formed not of fingers but wriggling masses of snakes, they curled about each other snapping their hungry maws. It was in these serpentine hands that Jack was held aloft, swinging upside down, gripped by the ankle. I wrenched my pearl handled revolver out of its holster at my hip and took aim. But where could I possibly shoot? Into the mass of snakes? Even if I hit one what would it possibly do? The most I could hope for was for the monster to drop Jack. But even that was hardly a hope, he would fall upon the javelin like stalagmites that littered the floor to be impaled.

Jack thrashed, his hair hanging toward the ground, one foot free to kick, his hands bringing his rifle to bear upside down.

My decision, or rather, my indecision, was made for me. A terrible hot pain lanced through my shoulder and I was pulled backwards across the blood slicked floor. She appeared behind me, what we had taken for a woman.

This thing that had a claw through my shoulder was Echidna. The mother of monsters, the beast who breathed before all beasts. Daughter of Hell and Earth. Her pale skin, gleamed in her mate's scarlet light, her torso giving way to the slithering tail of a snake. Her fingers six inch claws.

Incongruously, being dragged to her viperous teeth, I laughed. I had killed my mother once. I would do it again. For this thing that wished me devoured was as much my mother as the woman I had slaughtered in that tenement. I held my revolver upside down over my head and fired into her. A horrific scream split the air of the cavern but her claws were torn out of me and I was dropped. I could feel the heat of the blood coming from my wound, but not the pain. All I felt of my blood was the singing. I could not stop that laughter that fell from my lips. I was beyond giddiness.

The edges of the world had sharpened and I could feel her movements before she made them. I bled horribly, but felt only ecstasy.

I bolted at her, shooting again and bringing my knife to bear. I had aimed poorly on my first shot, clipped her shoulder, the next shot I would do better. Her thick snake tail lashed out and smashed me sideways before I could fire. My body lifted up, cracking against a pillar of a stalagmite. I dropped down, rolling behind it to get back my breath.

I heard the retorts of Jack's rifle. One. Two. Three. Then the pounding of steps coming toward me. He dove and rolled, back against an adjacent stalagmite in time for that fire breath to blast between us. I smelled burnt hair.

When the fire abated we reached out at the same time, seizing each other's cuffs and lurching forward into a run. We scampered around stalagmites, dodging the lashes of snakes and the bursts of flame.

"Jack!" I shouted and I tossed my revolver. He could not bring his rifle to bear and he was the better shot.

He caught the revolver and fired off a few shots as they ran. A growling roar from behind them suggested that his aim had been true.

We broke free of the stalagmites and fled down a long passage that twisted even further down. They had left their lamps and the fire from Typhoeus no longer illuminated the caves. I reached out and took his hand so we would not be separated. We fled downward.

The next blast of fire was fortuitous, in a flash of red light we saw before us the edge of a cliff and below that the glittering of water. At the same time we threw ourselves backwards to stop us from clattering over the side.

Jack heaved me back, behind a rocky outcropping, pulling me against him. I felt his fingers touch the blood that spilled from my impaled shoulder and he swore under his breath in my ear.

"This seems to be where we make our stand," He whispered.

"Jack," I hissed. Finally I was feeling my wound, the pain that radiated from it, the weakness in my limbs from bloodloss, "Jack, there's a little bit of rock jutting out over there, I saw it. If I go all the way over there, they'll come for me, pick me off first. You can get behind them. You'll have time to get out. Well, you'll have a few spare seconds. I'm sorry, it's all I can give you."

Jack did not say anything. I felt the beating of his thunder heart and felt the heat of his breath. But he seemed riveted to the stone, seemed to have turned to stone himself.

"Alright," he said, he did not sound like himself. There was no purr in his voice, nor any hint of teasing, "Annalee, take your gun," he pressed it into my hands. "Go to the outcropping, draw them out. I hit Typhoeus a few times, he is too large, perhaps bullets will take down Echidna, I will shoot at her. You focus on him."

"No, Jack, you gotta get out of here."

"Shut up. Get onto your rock."

I reached up and touched his flaxen hair, then I turned and dragged myself out, leaving a trail of blood in my wake.

They were coming. The slithering grew to a cataclysm and they came about the corner, Typhoeus' fire lighting the cavern. I did as Jack had said. I left her for Jack and looked only at the snake fingered father of monsters. I emptied my revolver into him. I knew that Jack was shooting, but I could not hear it. I could not hear anything. The world was narrowed entirely to my and the father of beasts. He bore down on me, black eyes flashing in his own fire.

He came down on me and I abandoned my gun, holding aloft my knife instead. His mouth opened so tear me apart and I thrust upward, his teeth bit deep into my flesh and I screamed but my knife sank to the hilt into the roof of his mouth.

He tipped over the edge, the now dying snakes wrapping around me and pulling me with him. I was held to his chest as we fell, dropping fifty feet into the water below. It was so cold. I drew my final breath, slipping under, dragged down by his bulk.

He released the dying blasts of his fire breath, red light living a short life in the water. I saw the surface fleeing farther away, saw the limp body of his mate spiraling passed us. Saw the trails of blood, his and mine, coming up. I could not break free. I did not have the strength.

The light faded with the cold. Had the water once been cold? It felt warm now, around me and within me. A cradled hold. How convenient that I had come to the mouth of Hell by my own volition, I would not have far to travel.

A final blast of light and something else broke the surface. A lithe shape that dove in an elegant arch, in the dying light gold glowed about his head. He was hot to the touch, pulling me from the grip of the monster, raising me up. It did not make sense. My direction was down, I should not be going up, not be dragged toward life by an angel limned in gold. My place was beneath. I was both inside my body and without it, no longer governing its breath.

I felt and did not feel the fingers that pried open my mouth, the lips over my own and hot breath put into my lungs. So much breath, over and over. I wanted to breath back. But my flesh took no more orders. I saw but I did not feel the hands over my chest, pushing down, rhythm interrupted by panic. He, the holy force, the golden man who wanted my heart to beat. I wanted to give it to him, a beating heart. I could not. My flesh lay still and cold.

He was not patient in his demands, his voice screamed, he beat at my chest in wrath. Fingers forced back my chin, his breath fire down my throat. And it came back. Pain seizing from my shoulder, ache through my chest, frozen chill. Water came up and I forced my head to the side, expelling it from my body. I made my lungs open and take in air. I felt my heart give in to his directive.

But I could no longer see, light did not dance from him now that my body had returned to my control I saw only through my eyes.

"Lee?" his voice was so rough. Jack. I couldn't say it. "LEE!" He pushed my hair back, his fingers were at my neck, feeling the movement of my blood. His cheek was at my face, my breath upon his skin.

His voice choked, "Lee. Lee." It was no longer a word he said it with such repetition. A mantra or a prayer.

I could not move one of my hands. The other I brought up. I felt his cold hair, he heat of his face beneath it. My voice cracked, it barely made a noise, "Jack."

He rose, lifting me with him in his arms. His body thrummed with the beating of his heart. He carried me up the rocks to the plateau I had fallen from.

I wanted my heart to continue to beat. I wanted to stay here, with Jack. But I could hardly draw breath. My muscles shook in weakness. So much of my blood had been left on the stone and in the water.

He laid me down in the maw, where the fighting had begun. Her lantern still glowed and I could see him now, hovering over me. His hair had come loose, it shone wetly in the lantern light. I could only see him, my peripheries were fading.

He drew his knife from his calf and opened the lantern. He set the blade over the open flame. He tore away my shirt, revealing the bleeding wound beneath.

"I don't have my instruments," he breathed. He swore, "I know what to do. I am the best at t _his_. This is what I can do. I don't have my tools." He drew the heated knife from the flame and pressed it against my skin.

I screamed. I was too far faded to have reservations about my displays of pain. I had returned to feeling my body that I might feel this.

His face was gripped in confusion and horror. I began to slip away.

His work done, he pulled me against him, up to his chest, "Lee, you cannot go. You cannot."

I wanted to speak. I could not make the words.

"I can't do it, Lee," he said, his voice was broken and I could do nothing to repair it. "I cannot go back. Don't go."

I could not feel the tips of my fingers, nor the ends of my toes. I thought of Cas' lips against my own, the thrumming in my heart they had started. I knew what I wanted.

My injured arm was pressed between my side and his and he held me but I lifted my other, I had to move it slowly or it slipped out of my control. I laid my hand against his face, I turned his face down to look at me,

This, the smallest of urges was enough. Jack came down to me. Not the golden holy man that I had thought him to be. The monster who devoured the flesh that I had trapped. Who fed me marrow while he starved. Who wet my lips with blood.

His breath was fire on my skin. And his lips were against mine. It was a culmination and it was a plea. His hands cradled my head and he pressed his lips to mine. Again and again. He laid his forehead against me. I was beginning to fade. I could not keep open my eyes.

"No!" he raged against me, "You cannot leave me. You cannot abandon me, Lee. You cannot go. I cannot do it, not now, not again."


	10. Lingering

**Chapter 10: Lingering**

"Anna! Anna!" I came awake to Will who hovered over me, an earnest smile across his face, "Wake up, Anna, we have to go."

"Will?" I asked.

He flicked my forehead, "Who else? Get up, we have to leave."

"Where? What are you talking about?"

"Just get up." He smelled so good, like home.

I struggled up, it was so hard to move. "Will, it hurts. My arm. My chest."

He turned back, "I know, not for long, come with me. Everything will be alright."

I stumbled and called out.

He lifted me in his strong arms and held me against his chest. "Don't worry, I will carry you. It will not hurt so much." He held me, carrying me out of my room and down the hallway toward his loft, "It's alright, Anna, we will be there soon."

The trap door was open and it spilled a golden light. It was warm and inviting. As its tendrils fell upon me the pain began to ebb, "It feels better, Will. My Will."

He pressed a kiss on my forehead, "You are done, Anna, you do not have to fight. I have you."

I wanted to go. I wanted to be carried into the golden light. I did not want to fight. I closed my eyes, "My Will."

Fingers touched my shoulder, danced over my face. Pain arched through my skin, radiating from my shoulder and coursing through my blood. I screamed. My voice was hoarse. I lurched. I felt as though I was falling. I swooped forward. Every inch of my flesh hurt, through and through.

My eyes opened and hurt with the light. I tried to throw up my arm against it and cried out.

"Lee!" Someone was over me, he had his hands on my face. I couldn't see him, the white light from the window was too bright.

It was not Will. Where was Will? Where had the golden light gone? It was so cold, it hurt. I had to fight not to cry. My other hand, I could move that. I brought it up to shield my eyes. My throat made a strangled whining sob. I was dizzy.

A curtain was drawn over the window and I lowered my arm.

"Lee?"

My eyelids were heavy, why did my chest hurt so badly? Who stood over me? It wasn't Will. Where was Will? He said that it wasn't going to hurt. He said he would take me.

"Why did you," I tried to make my tongue, thick in my mouth, say the words, 'Whadya," was more close to what I said. I tried again, "Why did you...put me down?"

Fingers brushed hair from my forehead, it clung with sweat, "I carried you from-"

"Not far enough. Not far enough. Still hurts. It hurts." I felt tears slip down from my eyes, hot, dripping over my ears.

"Yes. Yes I hurts. I know it hurts." But he sounded relieved, happy even.

It took me until then to realize he was not Will, "You aren't. You aren't. Where?" I did not understand that I was not making sense. I opened my eyes and made them blink. He was standing, leaning over me. His hair was greasy, it hung around his face. I could not fathom where Will had gone.

I sank back and closed my eyes.

"Anna, you're going the wrong way." Will had returned, he stood behind me. I was downstairs, in the kitchen. He put his hand on my shoulder. The shoulder where the pain started. It hurt to stand, to breathe.

"Don't go outside, Anna," He said, "Come back, let's go. Do you want me to carry you?"

"Yes," I said and I let him pick me up. Where his fingers touched I felt no pain. He cradled me again, as he had before and took me through the kitchen, he started up the stairs. As we ascended my pain ebbed, I began to feel warm again. At the landing I could see the loft and its golden light. I wanted to go up. I wanted him to take me up.

He had his first foot on the ladder rung and I could feel the warmth of the light on my skin.

"Will that hurts!" I hissed. He had taken my wrist. His hand was cold and brought with it the pain. No, not Will's hand. Will's hands were around me. It touched my face.

I lurched into wakefulness, only slightly more cognizant of myself than I had been before. The hands were still on my face, tender touches. But I hurt.

"Lee? Are you awake?"

I peeled open my eyes. He hovered over me again. Not Will.

"Ah, see, it isn't so bad, a nick at most," The teasing wasn't quite there, the cavalier tone entirely put on, too much of an edge.

But it was this sorry attempt at teasing that made me remember, "Jack?" My vision was starting to clear up a little, I could see him standing up from a chair at the side of the bed that I was laying on.

"Lee? You're awake."

"I'm cold." I got a look at him. He looked terrible. I hadn't seen him look this bad since the boat. His hair had been tied back, not in his regular, fashionable coif, grease slicked back from his face, out of the way. Purple circles were under his eyes, stubble grew on his cheeks. We were not in a hospital. We were in the Bed and Breakfast. But I was stitched up. Dressing on my shoulder, the jagged cuts from the bites all neatly closed.

He rose to find me a blanket but I called him back, "No, come here, please."

I lifted my good hand, which took every ounce of my energy. I touched the tips of his fingers and tugged them. Like in the cave, this was all it took, the smallest of urging. He laid down beside me, moved me carefully so I leaned against his chest, pulled his fingers through my hair. Warmth bled from his body into mine.

"I...I remember the shoulder and the bite, why does my chest hurt so badly?"

"You have some broken ribs, a cracked sternum."

"How did that happen?"

"Well I had thought you were drown, I was trying to keep you alive. Would you like me to apologize? I can let you die next time, if you like."

I nuzzled my head back against his chest. I was drifting away again. Bleary, I murmured, "You kissed me." But when the tugging came to pull me away I let myself slip under. I wanted to see Will again.

But Will did not come back, nor the warm light.

It took me weeks to get back on my feet, every time I closed my eyes I expected Will to come back, to take to up to the golden light. I had figured out what that would mean by now. How close I had been. I wouldn't tell Jack, but there were times that I wanted to go, that I resented him pulling me back.

But he had pulled me back, and I was alive in a Greek bed and breakfast.

Jack swung through the door with a rakish grin, "Feeling alright, Lee? Well enough to head for home?"

I sat up and pulled myself to my feet, "Yes, let's go home."

He reached out to steady me, a hand on my shoulder and hip. I could still remember that he had kissed me, when he thought that I was going to die. I didn't mean to, I flinched back. When had he become a man who leapt into a cave lake after me and kissed me as I died? I didn't know what it meant. His hands darted back.

"Jack," I said with some hesitation.

He looked somewhat taken aback, he held himself very carefully, his gray eyes flickered between my shoulder, that was bound in fresh bandages, and my lips.

"Jack," I said again with more surety, but I ran a hand through my hair, "You said you couldn't do it, you asked me not to leave."

He took a moment to gather himself together. He shrugged, "I enjoy your company, Lee."

I didn't answer that. I just waited for him to go on.

That mask he always wore slipped off, but he was not entirely ice underneath anymore. Not quite human, but not quite nothing. "There are not many like us."

I tried to cross my arms, flinched, and let them hang. I thought of the corpses he brought home and the whores who kissed me for not telling them I would be away, "We are not entirely the same, Jack."

His laugh was hollow, "We are not entirely different, either."

I looked him in the eyes, "You kissed me."

A different person might have equivocated or told me he was caught up in the moment. But he was Jack. He smirked and quirked up an eyebrow, "I would like to do it again."

I took a step forward and he came to meet me, one hand on my hip, one cupped around my face. Mine gripping the collar of his shirt. His lips pressed to mine. Fire arched through my blood at the contact. He trembled under my fingers.

One might assume that the man who described himself as an anthropophagus, as a titan, the self proclaimed monster in the skin of a man, would be fierce. Would set upon me like prey in snapping teeth and ravenous hands. He did not. His mouth was soft, his lips barely traced over mine, and down my throat, and on the shell of my ear. His nose pressing into my hair. He shook.

I shook too. This one man who knew the lengths and widths and depths of my depravities didn't slice open my veins in reparation but slid his lips along my skin and whispered my name into my ear.

I wish that this were the entirety of this story. I want to write that it started with a the press of lips on the Greek coast and concluded in our London home. Is there not some version where that is enough? Where I am allowed to watch gray leak into his hair and the quickness leave his step? Behind us were forged so many foul memories that bound us in blood. Could we not have been given the time to forge ones that did not smell so wretched? What had I done that I did not deserve that?

What a foolish question. I know what I have done. I know the things I put in motion. I brought the doom upon our heads.

But allow me to linger here between the dying and the fall.

We came back to London.

Neither he nor I knew entirely how to act. The ship had been rather decided for us, I was still mostly bedridden and there were enough people around that we were never alone. But by the time we were home I was back on my feet, and in our home we found, of course, solitude.

He shut the door behind us and set down both of our bags, my shoulder still stung if I carried too much. After the nearly ubiquitous noise of the ship and the London streets, the house's silence bore down.

"Are you hungry?" Jack asked a little awkwardly.

"Sure, I could eat."

He turned away from me. My arm flickered out nearly without my say so and I held him by the wrist. He turned back and I pressed my lips to his. After a moment of surprise he near to melted against me, stumbling forward, then coming into his own he pressed me back, hands on my hips.

I collided with the closed door he held me against him, lips moving over mine. I slid my hands into his hair, removing the ribbon and wrapping the fine blonde strands about my fingers. He made a soft noise.

Suddenly he pulled away from me by less than a millimeter. When he spoke I could feel the movements of his lips. His voice was stripped away of the teasing purr it usually had. It was clotted with desperation, "I am Jack the Ripper."

Against mine, his body was stiff, tensed against the most brutal assault.

Once more, tender, I pressed my lips to his. "I know."

His muscles drained their tension and he was nearly collapsed against me.

I kissed the skin of his face, everything in reach of him, to the tips of his ears and the column of his throat.

He spoke again, his heated breath in my ear, "When I go too long I feel the burn of it in my very bones, Lee. I have to feel the thrill of it. And what is it that marks the human from the monster?"

"The difference," I said as I took one of his hands in my own. I kissed each of those fingers I had watched pull the trigger against unknowing victims, balance a scalpel over the dead and living alike, draw marrow from a bone to slide between my teeth. "Is that humans hunger for more than flesh." I held his hand with both of my own, "You were hungry. What does an anthropophagus do when it is hungry?" I kissed his bared palm.

Jack. My Jack who fed me blood and let me sharpen my teeth. Is there an inch of you that I could forget? You seem, to me, carved into the memory of my skin. How the color rose in your cheeks while you hunted and how your shoulders turned when you had your shot. Your heart against my ear. When your fingers lifted to my skin did they feel the chill of the ice beneath or was I warm to you? You were always warm to me. Goddamn you, Will Henry. Goddamn you.

For a moment after my lips touched his palm he stared down at me with dark charcoal eyes, then their usual twinkle of mischief returned and he smirked and snapped his teeth at me.

Playfully, I twisted out of the cage he had made around my with his arms and I ducked passed him, darting toward the parlour. He laughed and moved with much more quickness than I did. Not halfway through the carpeted parlour he turned my back with a twist of his hand on my shoulder. I cried out, his fingers having pressed against my still smarting injury. Unapologetic, he struck out with a sweeping kick and knocked my feet from under me. I was caught before I struck the ground, one his hands beneath me, the other across my back and under my head. He held me at an angle, like a helpless dancer.

"What sort of scavenger are you?" I asked, "Preying on the injured."

He laughed, "I would prefer 'opportunist.'" And once more, he kissed my hungry mouth.

Jack, as I had learned, did not ply his skill without fee. Although the hunt for Typhoeus and Echidna had seemed, from my end, short and independent, it had been nothing of the sort. But he had meant it as a grand surprise, which kept me poorly informed. Finding the cave alone had taken him months.

We had not been able to produce the corpses, of course, but sometimes during my bedrest he had shown an empty cave to his backer and received his handsome, and predetermined, price. It had not been insignificant. When I had come back to myself, I had received half.

"This is a step up from twenty five percent," I had said teasingly.

"You are a step up from an apprentice."

If one were not gluttonous it was enough for a lifetime. If one were moderate it was well enough for three, which was my intention.

On just my second day back, I quit the house for Cas' and Lights' tenement. They would be angry, I hadn't told them I was going and I had been away for a long time.

I knocked on the door. I had made sure to come in the hours of morning after nocturnal customers had left and before the odd denizen of the afternoon might come calling.

It was Cas, this time, who opened the door. She hadn't yet fixed up her smeared makeup from the night before, nor combed down the wild wrath of her hair. I could hardly help but smile, she looked like a goddess of the wilderness.

I expected more treatment such as before, but I didn't get it. She lunged at me without a word and threw her arms about me. "Lights, come come, she is back and not so dead as we thought!"

I was wrenched into the fetid hovel and called out in pain. Her arms retracted as though burned, "You are hurt!" It was then that she struck me, once across the face, "You run off, you do not tell us, you do not come back, foul witch!"

Lights, wearing only her underthings pulled herself out of her foul bedding, "Well shit in the street, we pegged you for a corpse long time ago!"

"I nearly was," I said, and I showed them the wounds.

"You want breakfast or sommat?" Lights asked, recoiling from my hurts, "We got some eggs might not be so bad yet."

"I came with a...a gift for you."

Lights grinned, "Oh, Jesus the Son, did you bring somethin' from far off? You lil' tease!"

Cas gave a dignified laugh, "Of course, you bring me gift! How could you not? Am I not the most beautiful?" She batted her eyelashes at me with a sultry pout.

I tossed them each the stack of pounds. One third of my take each. Enough for a lifetime. They stared at them, all wind taken from their sails. Lights swore.

Cas let out a single sob then leapt at me, batting at me with the notes, her face contorted in fury, she howled, "Has it all been pity then?" she shrieked, "Is that why you give us your presence? You think we need this?" Tears were coursing down her cheeks but she did not look pitiable. "You think we need you? You think we are things to save? I do not need you!"

I caught her wrists, "Casimir," I said, "No, no. You think I have ever pitied you? You think I don't admire you every time you speak? You think the thrill I feel when I see you or Lights at my door is pity?" My next sentence seemed weak, but I couldn't keep it from my lips, "You came to me for Christmas."

Tears still fell down her cheeks. I released her wrists so I could wipe them away, "My mother sold her own daughter because she was hungry. I am not a whore because I was lucky, Cas! I found my father who happened to have some money to him. How is this different? Is this the life that you want, Cas? Living here with mice and dirt and decay? I thought you were a goddess!"

Her voice shook but some fierceness remained, "I am."

I smiled at her, "Then take it as an offering, Dzydzilelya. Do as you wish with your life."

"I want to paint." It was a desperate whisper falling from her lips, "I want to make beautiful things."

"Is there another kind of thing that you could ever make?" I said, pressing a hand to her face.

"I am a whore!" It was the only time I had heard loathing in her voice, revulsion.

"I am a cannibal."

Her sensuous lips parted, then she whispered, "Jezda."

"Dzydzilelya"

"You and your blonde hunter, yes?" She said, something I could not name in her voice.

"...Yes."

"Then this is offering, for your altar," she breathed in that low alto. She kissed me. She did not stop. Her tongue against mine, rough and sure and demanding. Her slim fingers beneath my man's shirt on on the skin beneath.

Then she stepped back, eyes no longer close to tears but with their previous radiance, "You know now, _doktar_ , that you could have had a goddess."

Lights, whose presence I had forgotten, whistled, "Don't have to tell me none of that, doc, I'll take the money and run!" She laughed her harsh and brutal laugh, "We can clean ourselves up nice and get a place ain't got no rats!"

I cannot remember another afternoon like that. The sun seemed too golden. They scoured the whore's paint from their faces and washed themselves in their basin, twisting their hair into curls. We linked arms and shopped for dresses and slippers and parasols until the three of us looked like a set of ladies from a novel. Cas made no further overtures but nor either did she remain distant.

They delighted in clean cafes and restaurants with wine. We found them, for the were to continue living with one another, a flat that they could keep quite nicely. It was painted white with picture windows. We had it furnished. Lights was enamored of soft fabric in blues and greens.

When night came, Lights took me by the hand and said, "Doc, we don't owe you nothin' that clear'd up yeah? I don't go 'round owin' people."

I laughed and kissed her cheek, "You don't owe me a damn thing, Lights, I had money, now you do too."

"So, we're good as blood now, you know? We ever gonna meet that slick genta'man what keeps you warm at night?"

"I'll see if I can bring him around."

"See you back here soon, Lizzy," she said.

We were blood, she had said, good as, "My name isn't Elizabeth Baron. It's Annalee Warthrop."

"You goddamn foul mouth liar!" She cackled, "Well, get out of here now, fore Cas starts in on you again!"

It was a further month of stiffness and jolts of pain before I felt whole again. I had been waiting for it, for the morning that I woke without pain in my skin. Light came through the drawn drapes and stole through Jack's golden hair. I took a moment to look at how it struck his face. How blonde stubble grew up on his boyish cheeks. Can I ever scour it from my memory, how when I shifted his arm grew tighter around me? I wanted a hundred thousand of mornings such as this.

His eyes opened in slow blinks. "Don't get up," he murmured, pressing his face against my shoulder and pulling me back, "You are too warm to allow to leave." There were moments before he was entirely awake, or while he slipped to sleep, when tenderness leaked from his lips. I allowed him to hold me against him.

We had done nothing more intimate than allow the entireties of our bodies to lay against one another in sleep, although I had given up my bedroom for his. When I wake without him what I miss is his feet, which were never entirely warm, mixed up with mine. There was always something that stirred my heart about Jack in bare feet. It was Jack who was not poised to strike, Jack who lingered on silk sheets and murmured into my ear while he faded in and out of slumber.

We finally rose but we didn't dress, just wrapped ourselves in dressing gowns and went downstairs to procure breakfast. He wasn't working as a surgeon then, he didn't have daily employment. Of course, nor did I. We were quite free to be leisurely with our mornings.

On this particular morning he percolated coffee and poured some for each of us, loading a plate with two pastries, "Come here," he said, and withdrew to the sitting room to recline on the divan. I reclined against him. His arm encircled me. Languidly we drank our coffee and ate our pastries. He took my cup when I was finished and reached out to put it on the side table with his, the plate followed.

I peaked up at him and saw color raise on his cheeks. He said, "I bought something for you."

"Something that is making _you_ blush, Jack? You have my curiosity."

He had quite obviously planned our venture here, because he produced a box from behind the divan. I sat up a little to open it. He watched me removed the scarlet ribbon and lift the satin covered lid with hesitant eyes.

Sitting on a silk cushion within was a slender silver revolver with a pearl handle. Upon both the metal and the pearl were intricate carvings of roses in full and half bloom. Beside it was a knife in the same pattern.

"Jack," I said with mock admonishment, "You bought me flowers."

"Is that not the proper thing to give to a lady I am courting?"

"Was the murdering part of the courtship?"

He nipped at the tip of my ear, and growled softly, "What a foolish question."

I turned and smirked at him, "I have something for you too."

I drew them out of the pocket of my dressing gown and handed them to him.

"Boarding passes? Where are we going?" This was one of the qualities of Jack that kept me so firmly. It was the rare man who did question a prerogative set by a woman. As long as it promised thrill, he would allow himself to be led, by me at least.

"There is an island the Caribbean that doesn't have a native population, but I'm told there is a rather nice shack on the beach."

"Mmm," he said, nuzzling his nose into my hair, "Anything exciting live there, poppy?"

"Not at the moment, although soon enough two deadly monsters will be coming ashore."

His fingers trailed at my sides and he kissed my neck, his lips parting to tenderly bite and tease the flesh there. I gave a quiet gasp, leaning into him. When he spoke, his voice was rough, "That sounds like it will be a thrilling hunt."

I pressed back against him and his fingers wrapped about my hip. A low groan shuddered from his lips. I drew my hand beneath his dressing gown, up his bare thigh, goosebumps rose in my wake and I felt him tense behind me. "Do you think you can take the beast alive?"

His hand slid from my hip through the gap in my dressing gown and down, pressed against me, the sharp thrill of it made me call out. Husky and dark he growled, "Oh I shall most certainly take her." His fingers moved and I arched, small cries coming from my lips.

"And if," I asked as I trailed my clawed fingers lightly up his leg, between where our bodies pressed together to wear I could feel him growing stiff at my back. He had a better angle, my hand was somewhat awkwardly behind my back, but the effect was undeniable. I drew my fingers delicately up the softest of his flesh. A throaty moan filled my ears and I finished my question, "She should take you instead?"

His retaliation was immediate and I convulsed. He bit my ear again and whispered, "The hunt shall be grand regardless."

Goddamn you, Will Henry. Goddamn you.

The island was as it had been promised, gloriously sunny and white beached, enlivened by bird song. Just as I had been told, there were no permanent settlements on the little patch of land, but a sailor had once built a single room shack that looked out onto the coast. This was where we made our base camp, although we did not intend to stay there, at least not at first.

"How much of a head start shall I give you?" Jack asked. He was in his full glory, hair combed back, out of his face, bedecked in his hunting gear. The only thing missing was his rifle. He had brought it, but this particular hunt did not call for it.

"An hour ought to suffice, I think."

He winked, "Then I will give you two. I wouldn't want the game to be over too fast."

"Shall we start right away?"

"I do not believe myself capable of waiting."

"Well then," I said, sidling up to him, hovering a fraction of an inch from his lips. He leaned forward to kiss me but I leaned back, only enough to keep just out of reach, "Happy hunting."

His lips curled into a hungry smirk and I was out the door, sprinting toward the foliage cover.

As soon as I reached it I slowed, picking the first fifty feet or so carefully, watching not to break twigs. Then, I scampered up a tree. They were dense enough that I could move among the limbs. It was not something Jack would be able to imitate, being quite a bit heavier.

Thus I spent my first two hours, carefully moving from tree to tree trying to make as much distance between me and my starting position as possible. When two hours had elapsed I felt a shiver go up my spine. The hunt was on.

I had my new knife with me. Not for Jack, of course, but in case I ran into wildlife that required handling. It sat comfortably in my boot.

At high noon, four hours into the hunt, I heard a single snap of a twig. I went still and perfectly silent, poised above the tropical forest floor. I knew he was cursing to himself for his lapse in absolute silence. And then I saw him. My heart sped under my ribs. Jack in his element was a glorious thing to observe.

He stalked beneath me, leonine in his steps. It quickened my breath to linger here, invisibly above him. Just passed me he stopped, holding stock still and cocking his head to one side. I held my breath. He turned back. Those dark eyes flickering about him. A single loose strand of hair falling over his forehead. I exhaled.

His head shot up and he saw me, hungry grin twitching over his face. He leapt, kicked off a tree and again up at me. Simultaneously I leapt downward, swinging off a branch and hitting the ground. His premature attack had cost him precious seconds.

As I have said before, he might have been faster than me but I was the quicker. I darted between trees, hearing him in close pursuit behind me. My blood sang with it, elated at remaining just out of reach. I saw, as I fled a fallen tree that had foliage and underbrush growing up around it. I leapt it and fell beneath, huddling inside the brush and out of sight.

I might have laughed aloud. He cleared the tree in a single bound, tearing after me. I heard his footsteps fade. It would not fool him for long. But, for the first time, I had evaded him.

I left my hiding spot immediately and set off the way I had come, following his own tracks to disguise mine. I veered from this path after a hundred or so feet, going due east through the early afternoon. I wanted to keep the game going until nightfall, where Jack would be at his best.

At a small freshwater spring I stopped and rested, eating some of the rations I had brought. I lingered there in silence for a long while. The island was too small to really use distance in my favor, and I did _want_ Jack to find me eventually, so I gave it time. When the sun began to dip I took off again, heading south.

It was not until true night, when I crept nearly blindly through the forest that I began to feel it. The prickling upon the back of the next, the raising of the hairs on my arms. That unmistakable feeling of being hunted. Somewhere in the night, Jack was close.

I stopped, standing entirely still and listening to the noises of the forest around me. Insects chirped. Trees groaned. A soft breath.

I flew into motion, exploding forward away from the noise. A ripple of laughter came next, where the breath had been, and the chase resumed.

He swung himself forward and seized my wrist. I turned, twisting toward his thumb and fingers and breaking the hold then sidestepping and turning away from him. I ducked his next lunge and kicked out, knocking him off his feet. I leapt him and fled on. He was up and after me at once. Stealth now was abandoned for the heat of the chase.

For a single moment I turned back to see how quickly he approached and it was that moment that lost me the game. The moon, so much brighter on the beach than under trees blazed down like a silver beacon. He had chased me from my cover and was too close for me to turn back. I pelted down the sand, releasing an exhilarated shriek. I could feel him closing in, the brute strength of his speed out matching me. His laughter cut through the night air and he made the final leap. I had time only to turn to face him before he was upon me.

His superior weight bore me down and we tumbled into the sand, not thirty feet from the shack. He was swift in concluding his victory, pinning my hands down on either side of my head. Our breath came fast. There was a mad gleam in his eyes, which looked darker than black above me. I could not keep the grin from my lips. He reverberated with energy. The muscled power in his thighs that penned me in and the arms that held me down thrilled my blood.

"Tomorrow, you hunt me," he said, getting back his breath. Then lithe and sinuous he came down and kissed me, tongue, hungry and insistent against mine. I met him with equal desire, lifting my hips to press against him.

His drew back, and looked at me bathed in moonlight, "Lee. I -" He paused, searching for words. That mask fell back and I looked up on him, caught as I was between human and not. "I am no longer interested in being alone."

"Then don't be alone."

He fixed me with stare, I, enraptured, stared back. "You see me as I am."

I kissed him softly, "I prefer you as you are."

His head fell forward a fraction of an inch and his eyes closed for a moment as though these words were heady to hear, "You pulled me from the shipwreck." His voice was so soft it was almost difficult to hear.

"You fed me living flesh."

"I have-" his breath was shallow and fast, "I have told you all my secrets."

"I have told you all of mine."

His voice hitched and he closed his eyes, whisper harsh and desperate, "Do not leave me."

I paused for only a moment to think on my answer, to know it would be true, "I will not."

"Swear it."

"You as well."

A smile briefly lit his face and he stood, pulling me up with him. His hair was mussed from the chase, it fell around his face. He slowly dropped to a single knee, hands sliding down my legs. His hand wrapped around the handle of my knife and he pulled it from my boot, coming slowly back up to his feet. He stood so close to me I felt his breath upon my skin.

He lifted the rose carved knife and slid the blade across his palm. Then he handed it to me. I did not look away, I slit open my palm, allowing my blood to join his on the blade, its christening. I slid home the blade and straightened. I lifted my bloody hand with his and we pressed them together, our fingers intertwining at their tips.

"Jack," I whispered.

"Lee."

He raised his other hand and caught my chin and tilted it up and he kissed me. It remained chaste and soft for a single moment and then the hunger set upon us. Our hands released and he pulled me to him, mouth moving ravenously against mine. He lifted me and I wrapped my legs about his waist, his arms holding me aloft. He carried me back to the shack and laid me upon the bed.

Article by article we stripped each other of our vestments until we were laid bare. We did not regard the blood our hands left upon each other but touched every inch and could not get enough. He lay over me and I felt every part of him. I traced my hands down his chest, the slim compacted muscles and whispery trail of blonde hair. He slid down my body those long fingered hands pressing apart my thighs. He looked at me and gave me a charmed smirk before he lowered those lips to me. I cried out his name and buckled beneath him. The little death indeed.

He tasted of me when he returned to my lips. He waited upon me to nod and urge him on. His breathless gasp joined mine as we came into one. Our movements were slow, rhythmatic, he did not look away. Sleep did not find us until the sun was rising in the sky. Never had euphoria reigned to unmitigated in my soul as when I lay my weary head over his chest and he wrapped his spent arms around me.

Goddamn you, Will Henry. Goddamn you.


	11. The Fall

strong **Chapter 11: The Fall** /strong

When I was a girl I had laboured under the idea of fate, the misconception that I was dragged along, punched and bedraggled by the fists and wrath of God. Looking upon it now, I ought to take more of the burden upon my own shoulders. Events, of course, came without my consent. The money pushed into my mother's hands and me pushed into his. But had that not been followed by a choice? I had not stumbled into killing. I had taken to it with a sure hand. I had not hidden among the skirts of working women asking for laundry to do and sewing to work on that I might earn a pitiable living. I had gnashed my teeth and set to in mobs of bloody men. I could have allowed the white clad woman to lead me to the orphan train. I might be the adopted daughter of a wholesome farmer now. I was now of an age where strong shouldered farmer boys would be asking after my hand. But I had spit into her face and gone after the lurking name Dr. Pellinore Warthrop, the man who hunted monsters.

Warthrop. You never bound me to you how you managed to bind Will. I think you could have ripped the skin from his bones with your teeth and he would have stayed. I only needed a handful of your cruelties before I took back the reins of my future from you. I could have stayed at that school, dutifully returned to you every summer, graduated with poise and dignity. I could have married someone of society. If I had, my wedding would not have been an unlitigated mixing of blood on a beach to a man who had refined my murdering. There would have been a priest there and it would have been in a church. Perhaps the man taking my hand would have been a colleague of yours who asked after me after seeing the girl who trailed after you at colloquiums become a young lady. Would you have told him no if his papers were uninspired? Would your answer have depended upon his scientific acumen? Maybe he would have taught me Monstrumology and taken me with him on his excursions.

I would now have a trunk full of letters, signed, 'em _Your Will_ /em.'

But I had not stayed at school. I put myself back into the bloody streets.

I could have missed Jack's ship and remained at that first colloquium, followed in my father's footsteps and become a monstrumologist on my own. A real one, not the half cocked imposter dressed as a man.

I could have run off with Cas. She had kissed me and I had kissed her back and my stomach had fluttered and an entirely new possibility had arisen. I had the money, I could have left Jack to his bloodthirst and his hunting and left with them. With Cas and Lights. Taken them to New York. We could have lived out the rest of our days in a penthouse. She would have made me write to Warthrop and tell him I was alive. What would Warthrop have thought of that, of my heart bound to a woman and a whore? Would it be an improvement on its current binding to a murderer? After all, I saw Warthrop give himself in to Will.

But I did the least of these. I left school, I leapt aboard the ship, I abandoned Cas. I wounded and hurt and lied at each juncture. And it is what led me to the end. It is the course I took to the end.

I am not sure, now, if Jack Kearns ever knew who it was he had taken into his bed. Then, when I was young and foolish and very certain, I thought that he did. But it is possible that he only saw a sentient creature who had seen the blood on his hands and had not turned away. Heard the seductive promises that I would not leave him. The charm that came before the bite. That had always been the way of me.

Goddamn you, Will Henry. Will Henry? I have always loved Will Henry. The boy whose core was always compassion. Was it me that blackened him? Was he dragged to the desperate bottom by me or by his doctor? But he was there, lurking in the depths, in the dark parts of the heart where he, my sweet Will, was not indigenous. Do not mourn in the dark, Will Henry, swim up into the light.

I stood beside Jack in our kitchen. He was sipping tea, leaning against the counter. I was drinking coffee, sitting at the little table. He was looking at me. How much kinder it would have been to bare my teeth and devour him. How much kinder for Will to have found him painted scarlet, his marrow in my teeth.

But I smiled at him. The charm before the bite.

If I had been born with any sort of heart, it would have broken at how he looked at me. I was the rewriting of his map of the world, the lying cartographer.

"Lee," he said, and nothing more.

Young, and foolish, and very certain, I replied, "Jack," and I smiled, showing him my teeth.

"We ought to take a hunting trip," he said.

He was the restless sort, never one to be at home. But so was I.

"Sure," I said, "Where?"

"I thought a family reunion might be in order."

My stomach clenched for the moment that I thought he meant Warthrop but then I remembered the snapping of the teeth, "Africa then?" I asked, "And the anthropophagae."

He grinned at my understanding with those white teeth, "Indeed, sweetling, didn't I promise you I would introduce you?"

Can I tell you instead how he took me to a ship and we sailed to African coast. Can I tell you how beautiful he looked in that golden sun, with a rifle raised to his shoulder. Can I tell you of the color that rose in his cheeks when we descended into their pit, our ancestral home. The tiny breaths from his nose as he took aim.

Can I tell you that I drew my rose handled knife from my boot and crept forward, how I split open my veins and, smelling it upon my they surged forward, our cousins. Can I tell you of the rush of his bullets flickering passed my shoulders, booming by my ears. Of the scarlet spray that burst from our brothers and sisters when they were felled in front of me. Of the tension and the release of my knife cutting through their skin. The eye first, then just above the groin. Jack on the hunt is not a thing to miss.

Can I tell you how he kissed me among their corpses? About how we had become what he had wanted, a pack of two. The one who came first, play acting the broken wing to bring teeth down upon her. The second who descended in fury and gunfire.

Might I be even more kind. Might I tell you of a thirteen year old girl who stared down the barrel of a Winchester rifle, a dead wolf at her back? Might I tell you of the blond and smiling man who apologized and pulled the trigger. "Sorry, darling, no hard feelings."

But that is not the siren in the shadows, that seductive thing, the truth; how sweetly she calls your name, high upon the wind. The charm before the bite.

I finished my coffee and went back upstairs to dress. We were in London, so it was a fashionable dress, bustled at the back. Jack laughed when I came downstairs.

"I like you better in trousers I think," he said, winking at me, "with a knife between your teeth and a revolver in your hand. I will never tire of that."

"Then hurry up and bring me to our cousins in the south," I said. And I kissed him. His hands on my waist and my head tilted up. He was so tall. Bite out my throat, Jack Kearns. It is now or never. But he lifted his hands to my face. One quick motion, Jack, a twist to the side. You've done it before. There is no time left to waste. But he lifted his fingers and wound a lock of my hair in them, feeling its softness and tucking it back behind my ear.

"Are you off to see your friends?" He said, so close to me I could feel the movement of his lips, "Is that why you've dressed yourself so prettily?"

I smiled at him and kissed him again, "I thought you preferred trousers."

He returned the kiss, lips trailing down my neck. Bite down, Jack. Bleed me dry. Against my skin he said, "I do, poppy, but that does not mean I can't appreciate you in something more delicate." He lifted me up and sat me on the table so I was closer to his height.

I ought to have stayed there, Jack's hands on my waist and in my hair, his lips on my skin. I never ought to have left.

"I'll be back by evening." I went.

Casimir Szczpanik. Cas. You were never a goddess. I should not have thought of you as one. You were a woman. I ought to have known that. I drew you back from death. I saw you laid out on your filthy bed screaming in agony and I lifted the squirming beasts from your womb. You held a lifetime for me within your ribs had I only reached out and taken it. But I did not take it. You were not a goddess, and you were not immune to pain. I ought to have known that. I had seen you in pain.

I went to Cas' flat, her new and lovely flat where she lived with Lights. Where the sun shone in through the clean panes of glass. At least I did that one thing for you. At least now, if you are a whore, it is because you have walked down the path and not because you were dragged.

I knocked on the door.

"Lizzy!" Lights said, "Oh, well, that's not right is it? Annalee, yeah? S'Anna alright? Bit shorter for you, doc."

"Sure, Anna is alright," I said, "I'm leaving again soon, I thought I'd drop by."

"Well get your ass in here, then, we got tea and everything, real lunch, you know?"

"Where is Cas?"

"Oh, hell," she said, "Cas is in her room, always in 'er room, these days. Annie, look, I don't know how ya think 'bout it, but she had it bad for you. Go on, though, maybe you can get something in her belly." She meant food, but I thought of the squirming Sooterkinds.

I crossed the little living room that Lights had made so pretty. A little sky blue divan, a high backed arm chair in blue and cream stripes. A yellow rug. A dirty tea cup sat on a table next to the chair, and a book with a page marked. It didn't make the room look untidy, but warmer, occupied.

I knocked gingerly on Cas' door.

"What!" she snarled back, "Let me be here, em _kurwa_ /em."

"It's me, Cas," I said, "It is Anna."

She threw wide the door. Paint covered her hands, streaked over her face. Her hair was marked with it in clumps. Red, not paint, just heartache, rimmed her eyes.

"em _Doktar_ /em," she said, "You have not left us for good. I feared, yes, I feared the gifts were farewell."

"No, I'm here," I said, "You look…" How was I to finish that. She looked ripped apart, haunted, but still she looked beautiful. There was nothing that could be done to her that would take that.

A sheet was dropped over a low dresser. A canvas atop that. There was nothing on it. At least, no image. Just smears of color, vibrant at the edges, mixed to ugly shades of grey and brown where they met. Finger marks gouged into them.

"Cas," I said. I stepped into the room and I shut the door behind me.

Vitriol sparked through her and she shoved me by the shoulders, so hard I fell back against the door. She raised her hand and hit me, a smarting blow upon my cheek. Both touches left paint marked on my cheek and upon my clothes.

"You come, here!" she screeched, "You come here! em _Dokta_ r/em who came when not another em _doktar_ /em would! You call me 'Cas' and hold my hand and tell me I am not only a whore and then you come here! Where is your hunter? Do you know what he is? I know! I know! Annalee Warthrop. Monster Doctor. I know!"

Is that what she thought of me? The woman who saved her when no one else would. I had not meant to hurt her when I told her I thought she was more than flesh that could lay upon its back. Didn't she know that I lived in the darkest of the pits while she lived in the light?

"Cas," I said, but I could not think of anything else.

She seized my jaw and looked at me, "Annalee Warthrop, you told me your name. I will tell you what he is. A monster in the flesh of man. Annalee, you run!" Run, she had said. Run away from Jack. As though he were the one who would hurt me. It had been a dangerous pathogen he had picked up seven years ago with chloroform in a London alley. The sort that ate you raw.

"No."

She struck me again, and then she kissed me. I could never resist. It was desperate and fierce, she held me against her and pressed her lips, bruisingly, to mine. It stole my breath.

She flung herself back, "You saved me from death, em _Doktar/em_ Warthrop, now I save you."

"What?" I asked, "Cas what are you talking about?"

"Kiss me, and I will tell you."

I did. I drew her against me and I kissed her. We could have had an entire lifetime of this.

"I am not jealous, Anna," she said, when finally I had let her go, her lips red and swollen, "I do not do this for stealing you. You keep me alive, now I keep you."

"Do what, Cas?" What had she done to save me from Jack? What could she do against him? But this was something else I had miscalculated. I still thought of Jack as the force in the dark that I could not fight, who moved without sound and was something more than a man.

"I found him, Anna."

"Jack?"

Her eyes wavered, "No. Not your monster doctor who cuts my people up. Pellinore Warthrop."

I had felt more warmth in my blood while I drown in the cave. "Cas...Cas what did you do?"

Her voice was fierce, ragged, it came out in rushes, "You say to me your papa he hunt them, yes, the monsters. He was not so hard to find, no. The Warthrop who hunts monsters? I think, yes, not so many who do this, so I find him who does, here. And I ask him, yes, do you know Warthrop? Do you know him? He says yes, it was easy, Annalee, I found him. I told him to come."

"...you wrote to him," I felt my blood moving in my veins.

"Yes," She said, raising her hand to my cheek.

She was a woman of the night. Of course she did not see. Jack was the beast that hunted in the shadows. Hunted her. When anthropophagae looked upon each other they saw only brethren. Those dropped into pits to feed them saw only teeth and monstrous intent. The thing that Jack was depended on the angle.

"When? When did you write to him?"

"While you were away with your beast," she said.

Too long ago. He had gotten the letter. He knew. He knew. He knew. Twin reactions plagued me. Relief and dread. I could go home. Will would not want me to.

"I have to go home, Cas. I have to leave." I tore myself away from her and I fled. Out of the door and down the stairs. Up the street. I sprinted. My fashionable shoes were not made for this. They cut into my feet. Dread sung in my bones. In the morning I had lain in Jack's arms and called out his name. How had it come apart?

The door was open. I flew through it, and he was there, standing in the kitchen, revolver in his hand. Shoulders broad, tall, sharp jaw roughened by unshaven stubble. Dark hair in a soft tussle.

My Will.

Maybe if I had been quicker about it, I could have created a different outcome. My own revolver was in my handbag. I could have. But it was not something I conceived of. Not Will. Not my Will. It would have been easy, a shot between the eyes. He would be too heavy for me to get rid of on my own but Jack would have helped.

"My my, Pellinore will be em _distraught/em_." He would have said, then he would have looked at me expectantly. I would have paused. He would have elaborated, "The axe, poppy."

But I didn't shoot. I could not shoot him. Even after, I could not hurt him.

"Will," I said.

He turned and he tried to snarl, but it broke and he gave me his earnest smile, "My Anna." he said. Helplessly, he lifted his arms. What was I to do? What could I have ever done. My Will opened his arms to me.

I fell into them. He smelled as he had when he had carried me toward the golden light. Like home. I breathed him. My Will.

He held me tight against him, his nose in my hair, "My Anna." It was like when we were children, when we clung to each other hard enough that our little broken pieces began to stick together once more. He was made of me and I was made of him.

I couldn't ask him why he had come. Why he was in Jack's kitchen with Warthrop's revolver in his hand. I just put my arms around him.

"You still hate me, Will," I reminded him.

He held me tighter, "Yes I do, Anna."

His embrace was the sensation of being put back into place. Of disparate pieces reforming. Was Will the only one who could keep me as one?

"Will."

"Anna."

His arms still around me, that sweet voice in my ear he said, "He left you a note. On your kitchen table. Stuck it under a tin of cookies." His voice turned darker, twisted into anger, "That is so goddamn domestic."

I stiffened in his arms. I should have let go. I should have run. I should have found Jack. But I couldn't release Will. Take me to the golden light.

His arms were more cage than comfort now, "'em _Meet me at the docks, my sweetling./em_ ' Are the two of you going somewhere, Mrs. Kearns?"

"Will," I said, what else was there?

In my ear he said, "I'm going to kill him, Anna."

"Will, no!" I said. I tried to pull away. I tried to wrench myself from him but he was stronger than I was. I could have put a knife through his ribs. But even then, I could not. "Will, what has he ever done to you?"

Will's voice was desperate and cruel, "Nothing. Nothing. It is you that I hate, Anna. Tell me, do you love him?"

Pressed against his chest I told him, "Yes."

"And when you quake at all of the things you've done, does he kiss you until you can return to sleep? Do you wake with his fingers in your hair?"

"Yes."

"Good," he breathed, "Then I am taking what I am owed."

I fought against him again but those arms could not be conquered.

"I love him, Anna." he said, and I could feel the bite of the revolver pressed against my back, still in his hand. Not Jack, of course. Pellinore. "Do you know what you have done?"

I was still against him. I could not move.

"He knows, Anna. You put your secret on my shoulders and I told you what he would do and he knows."

"Will," I said in supplication.

His arms were coils around me, painful in their tightness, like he had so many years ago in his little bed in the loft, he shook. "He told me not to come back. Anna. I wish you had stayed in the gutter where you were born. I wish you had never come to his door. Anna. Anna. Do you know how badly it hurts, Anna?"

"No."

He snarled, "You will." He lifted me, carrying my writhing form from the kitchen, up the stairs. The house was overturned, the kitchen had not been his first stop.

Light came down from the open trap door, the golden light of the sun pouring through the high windows.

"Will! Let me go, no, Will, please. Not Jack. Please. You've got the gun, shoot me. I'm the one who took him from you."

He threw me into the attic and I tumbled, sprawling over the floor. I saw his face one last time. That earnest smile succumbed to desperation. Big in the trapdoor, too imposing to fight passed he said, his voice losing its anger and gaining grief, "You, Anna? Shoot you? How could I ever?"

I scrambled to him, knelt before him so that next to him, half in and half out of the trap door was of height with me. I put my fingers about his hand that held my father's revolver. I lifted the barrel and put it against my skull.

"Do it, Will." I even meant it.

"How could I?" His eyes met mine.

"Aren't you Dr. Henry yet?" I asked, "A Monstrumologist?"

"Yes," he whispered.

"Then it is your duty."

His head dropped forward, forehead against mine, the revolver was cold on my scalp, "Anna. I want to shoot you. I want to put a bullet through your brain. I want to spit on your corpse. But I can't. You know I can't. I love you, Anna, I have since the beginning."

I kissed his cheek, "My Will."

He shook once, torso convulsing, "Why did you leave, Anna? Why wasn't I enough? Were the adventures worth it?"

I laid my head on his shoulder and he shifted to keep the revolver under my chin, pressing into the soft flesh there. "Will. Do you want to know how I escaped on the boat?"

He let his head tip sideways, tucked onto mine, "Yes."

I scooted forward and his unarmed hand came up and held me against him. I spoke tiredly in his ear, "I captured three sailors, innocent sailors. I knew their names. I ate them piece by piece. Jack and I."

"You did. Not Jack. You."

"Pull the trigger, Will."

I felt the tears on his cheek, "I can't." He tightened his arm around me, "Anna, he called me . We were going to write a paper together. We were going to go on an expedition as partners."

"I'm sorry, Will, I'm sorry."

He flinched, his arm suddenly painful on my waist, "No, Anna. You aren't. Not yet."

He pushed me back and descended. Then the door snapped shut.

It was locked, I knew it was locked. I screamed. The golden light falling at my shoulders and I pounded on the door. I cried out. For many minutes I slammed my hands on the door and screamed. Until my throat was raw and there were splinters in my palms.

I was wild. I leapt to Jack's clean counter, my hands were filled with such strength. I beat my hands upon the glass skylights, bludgeoning toward that golden sunlight. I did not feel the broken shards slip among my skin nor the hot slick of blood. I curled my fingers over the wooden frame and I pulled my body up and over. The roof here was slanted and I let my body tip sideways, clinging to the window with my bloody hands.

There was a way down, like there had been a way up the side of the ship. This was easier still. No waves bore me down and I did not have Jack tethered to my back. The docks were far off and Will had gotten a head start. I fled toward them, toward Will and Jack. There was still glass in my hands and fresh blood dripped forth with every swing of my arms. This is what you brought me, Casimir.

Dread lived inside my blood. The loss of Jack or the loss of Will looming as a choking shadow. My shoes were truly broken now after this much running across the London pavement and I kicked them off to continue. The stone beneath them was cold and bit into my flesh with sharp edges. I could not stop. Something else pulled me beyond the pain that pulsed in my feet and in my hands and the stitch aching in my side. I was wrenched beyond the burning of my lungs and chill inside my ribcage.

I rounded to corner to the docks and looked out. I wanted to see Jack, grin in place and a raised eyebrow at my state. I wanted him to cross the docks and reach out, to take my hands in his.

"You're going to have to stitch these up, Lee. Quite the challenge with both of them so disfigured." He would say that.

"A gentleman would do it for me."

He would wink, "Then you ought to find a gentleman. Did I not warn you I would only show you how to do that once?"

I would laugh, "Nearly a decade ago."

"Ah, but I am a creature of my word."

I wanted to see Will, earnest smile in place, as it should have always been. Had it been me who had devoured the compassion that had lived in the center of his heart?

"Anna," he would say, worry crossing those sweet features, "You should have stayed in the loft. You were safe there. Your hands."

"I'm alright, Will," I would say, then correct myself, "They hurt."

He would lift me in those arms, "Let me take you home, I'll wrap them up for you. You might need stitches."

I saw neither of them standing upon the docks waiting for me, but both of them were there. Will had his revolver, pressed to Jack's chest. Jack was against the guardrail that kept the sea at bay. Beneath it was churning water.

Jack was grinning, but I knew that grin. A tiger backed into a corner and trying to decide how to bite. Will's face was a glut of anguish. I ran, slipping on my own bloody feet toward them.

But it was that, I think, that doomed him. Seeing me. Fitting.

Jack's eyes came up from Will to me, "Lee!" he shouted in warning, as though I didn't know Will's intent. As though Will were a threat to me.

When his eyes came off of Will's he shoved him. Two hands upon Jack's chest. Jack slipped back. He was too tall. His weight too much above the top of the guard rail. He went over. Screams were coming from my throat.

His grin abandoned him for cold eyes and that not quite human face. He reached out and he tugged Will down with him. There was a shot before the splash.

I ran on my wounded feet toward them, dove after the splash in the water. I hit the water with a crash that reverberated in my bones. The cold ocean pulled at my dress, I stripped it from my body. I swam down, desperate. Down and down.

I saw them in the cuts of illumination from the sun above. Blood spiraled from Jack's stomach. Where the bullet had gone. Beneath the sea they struggled, their muscular bodies writhing against each other. The gun was useless beneath the water, Will had dropped it. Will was not the skinny boy that he had been. Shorter than Jack, but broader, his muscles more weighty. They sank into the weeds.

Blood bloomed up, fresh and scarlet from where they had disappeared. Jack's knife maybe.

I broke into the weeds and swam toward them. They were apart now. No longer grappling. Jack was stunned, even underwater a bruise blooming on the side of his head. Blood coming in a red cloud from his wound. And he had been down too long, exerting himself in a fight. He floated down. Will was near him, Jack's knife in his shoulder. He struggled to swim upward, opened his mouth and bubbled emerged instead of noise.

They were, both of them, sinking. I did not know if I could save them. I could not save them both. One. I could save one. One.

I reached out.


End file.
